"State Of The City" Address By Mayor Kevin Johnson, Memorial Auditorium, January 29, 2015

I've lived in Sacramento since 1990, and Memorial Auditorium is less than three blocks from where I work - I used to work across the street - but in all these years I've never been inside. Part of the reason is that it was closed for many years for earthquake retrofitting, but still, I knew no graduating high school students from Sacramento well enough to get an invite.

Still, Jackie suggested I come along to view the annual "State Of The City" Address By Mayor Kevin Johnson. Like me, she didn't have a ticket either, but someone she knew was going to give her two tickets at the door and maybe we could both get in.

Parking was a zoo, so we were late arriving and her friend had already split, so there was no way to get inside. Still, Jackie persisted and persisted, pushing and pushing, stressing out that Sacramento Choral Society was already inside and just about to start. When one of the guards bowed her head in what appeared to be prayer, she saw her chance. We quickly bounded past and vanished into the crowd.

Festivities had just started. Lots of local politicos there. Lots and lots of them! We wandered through the upper tier of seats trying to find the best seats there, and I learned just how dangerous doing that is in the dark in an unfamiliar place like Memorial Auditorium! Ooooohhhh!

Gazing at the stage from the cheap seats, house left.

Sacramento Choral Society (with Donald Kendrick conducting) sing the national anthem.

The well-known artist David Garibaldi (and his well-known assistant whose name I can't remember) create an electronic (or at least multi-media) painting to stirring music. There was another video shown to stirring music that I liked, which portrayed Sacramento as a bustling world city - what the Maya might call the "Center of Creation".

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson announces an investment by the San Francisco 49'ers ownership team in the proposed Sacramento professional soccer bid.

Final tableau.  "Lip Service" sings behind the notables.

The band.

Afterwards, as we were making our exit, a reporter from KCRA TV-3 stopped us, pushing a camera and mike in our faces, and asked our reactions to the speech. Startled, Jackie gushed about Mayor Johnson's sports initiatives, but forgot about the arts initiative. I followed up about the arts. I don't think our interview aired, however.

Outside we bumped into Adam Sartain, who was there to hobnob with his fellow political wizards. They were all there, too!

Afterwards, we stopped at Step One. Pepper had asked me to come Thursday evening to give a testimonial to Fierce Funk on camera (camera hound that I was Thursday night, I couldn't resist) but the camera crew had already left. So, we just visited Pepper and friends instead, and talked about old times.