California Teachers Association Chic

I remember this building rising in the early 2000s in downtown Sacramento because it had to fit a really tight space next to the fortress architecture to the left of it - known as 925 L Street. I've always liked it, six stories serving as the Government Relations Headquarters for the powerful California Teachers Union.

The architects express some pride in their creation here, as do the builders here. 

I've tried to learn more online about the design style and locals' opinions about it. But I find almost nothing about this little gem. It's one of the great overlooked buildings in the "power and money" square mile surrounding the Capitol. 

Update May 2014: Sunrise

Big Yellow School Bus Goes Electric

Today I headed back into the California EPA building after a long walk in the February sunshine - and ambled by surprise onto a remarkable mobile architectural feat above. It's the first all-electric bus sold to a U.S. school district. 

Turns out it belongs to the Kings Canyon School District in Reedley near Fresno. I got to talking with the district's transportation chief who gushed enthusiasm over his new wheels. Then he asked flat out if I wanted to go for a ride. Sure enough, we took a slow spin around the block in a silent school bus that gets 120 miles to a charge. 

This is what I love about living in California. As the sign says: The Power to Change the World.

The Geography of Nowhere

This roadside attraction near Modesto, California, brings to mind one of my favorite books in the 1990s: James Howard Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere."

Kunster erupted onto the scene of urban planning with his wild manifesto of criticism about the state of the "public realm" in the United States. This above is the kind of thing he called "highway crud," as he described an assault "by the chaos of gigantic, lurid plastic signs, golden arches, red-and-white-striped revolving chicken buckets, cinder-block carpet warehouses, discount marts, asphalt deserts, and a horizon slashed by utility poles." 

My wife and I occasionally stop here for a Starbucks coffee while on Highway 99. It truly typifies a kind of off-ramp soul-deadening landscape that so often greets the American traveler.

I couldn't help myself. I came out with a latte', pointed the camera and drove away.

Window Decorating

   Old American movies often highlight a time when people went "window shopping," especially at Christmas. Big cities, giant department stores, lavish window displays.

  We don't get much of that in the average American city/suburb/county seat all now filled with Targets and Home Depots. So, what a pleasant surprise to amble into ye olde window display on J Street at the Citizen Hotel in downtown Sacramento. It's not just the nostalgic Santa memorabilia. Check out this great naughty and nice list below. How refreshing to see a corporate institution like this - especially in a political town, or maybe because it's a political town - go out on a limb like this with actual opinions on our world today.

 Thank you, festive and savvy Santa!

 The Nice List

And The Naughty List 

The authors 

Elegant 

The Classic American Two-Story Home, Retooled on California's Mare Island

Yesterday, returning to inland California from a trip to Marin County, I ventured off Highway 37  in Vallejo for 45 minutes to visit the old closed Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The 5,285-acre shipyard operated from 1857to 1996 and did much of the shipbuilding, overhaul and repairs of U.S. Navy fleets operating in the Pacific Ocean.

Driving into the property on Walnut Avenue I was struck by the rusting, dead hulks of warehouses, barracks and low-slung industrial buildings that may never be restored in an area the Navy is still cleaning up years afterward.

But I was especially interested in seeing some of the new development that started there during the housing boom. I found some on Flagship Drive near 7th Street in a new residential neighborhood built by Miami's Lennar Homes. The area was chock full of new houses built in the old styles, with front porches, second-story balconies and no garages out front.

 I am partial to this style from having grown up in a Midwest American two-story farm house, part of a Northwest Ohio filled with big families living in big houses. This newer neighborhood offered a certain retro nostalgia about how homes looked before the car changed them entirely. Nothing's ever as good as the real authentic oldies, but these are good.

Victorian Christmas

The holiday decorations have begun going up, honoring a fine tradition in this enveloping long early winter darkness of decorating our houses. While out for a walk today in the old Alkali Flat neighborhood of downtown Sacramento, I came across this beauty, pure Victorian charm. Nothing so says Old-Time Christmas like an Old Victorian, especially one behind a White Picket Fence. 

Deck the Walls With Creeping Fig

Several years ago my wife planted creeping fig on the side of our house and gave a whole new dimension to typical beige suburban stucco. It's a pain sometimes to trim and keep in shape, but the beauty is awesome. She's really got a knack for that.

Downtown today, I gazed at the same designer tactic in a commercial setting. Here below is the same creeping fig covering an entire side of the Clarion Hotel. It really gives the place a flair of downtown classic that it might not have otherwise. 

And here below is the city parking garage across the street. I remember it being built when I began working in downtown Sacramento in 2001. Now look at the place a decade later, covered in Ivy. It's picking up that leafy Sacramento ambience.

(Incidentally, as I took these pictures a guy walked up, starting chatting me up and showed me a driver's license from Canton, Ohio. Then he started a story about being here because somebody in the family died and what a nice city, and his three kids were in a car nearby and they didn't have money to eat because somebody was wiring him money in 24 hours. Ironically, I went to high school in Canton, Ohio. I did a dance in my head, ready to pull out $5 and give him the benefit of the doubt. Then I remembered that I've heard varying versions of this story for years. I just didn't trust it. I felt a little guilty and left to get back to work. More than you wanted to know from a site about architectural design, I know. Nice day for a story, though).

Some city worker has to trim this to keep the parking sign showing. Great city.

AND here is our look at home:

Just trimmed at the beginning of November. Note ladder, soon to put up Christmas lights: