By Bicycle: Midtown/Downtown Sacramento - Part I

The new Press Apartment building at 21st & Q St., across the street from the Sacramento Bee newspaper. The light-rail overpass where bats live(d) when I used to linger here in 2016 is behind this building.

The Press Club is a block away, at P Street. It just dawned on me that the Press Club gets its name from the newspaper. I've lived here thirty years, and I only just now made that connection. I am not the swiftest knife in the drawer!

The building in which the Sacramento Bee is housed has offices that can be sublet! The decline and fall of a great metropolitan newspaper! Damned Internet!

Pigs fly! (28th & U St.)

Ella K. McClatchy Branch of the Sacramento City Library (Poverty Ridge neighborhood). Is Ella short for Eleanor, of Elly Award fame? I wonder.

Joan Didion childhood home, 22nd & T St., Poverty Ridge neighborhood.

Dad's, on S Street.

Curious Mural, visible from Dad's.

Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church, 12th and S St.

Old Ironsides, and 10th and S St. I came here for a campaign stop when I ran for Governor in 2003

Cool-looking mid-century modern car wash. I think this is Orbit Wash, 9th and T St.

Not from a bike trip. A cool-looking, gold-colored mandala on the wall at Taste of Thai, 1628 Broadway Blvd.

Round Corner, 24th and T St. I like the Glass Block Windows.

Murals in the alleys just south of the light rail line, near 24th St.

American Market, 24th and N St. This store was featured in a montage sequence in Greta Gerwig's "Lady Bird."

American Market

American Market

The fellow who put this video together lists the American Market first

(I think he got the train tracks wrong - I think Greta was referring to the old Union Pacific tracks, not the light rail tracks in East Sacramento - but no biggie.)

First Baptist Church of Sacramento, 24th & L St.

The Vineyard Church, 24th and K St.

I like the look.

Various murals.

Prince, on 20th St.

Here's the light rail overpass I mentioned at the start. I need to return here at night and listen for bats.

Meanwhile, At A-1 Auto Repair

Various Covid News

The classic Vegas mentality at work. Thankfully the Strip is outside her jurisdiction:

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman thinks that businesses in the city that want to reopen should be able to — that way, those businesses that see outbreaks can just be closed again at a later date.

The mayor, who doesn't have authority over the Vegas Strip, shared her idea with MSNBC's Katy Tur in a phone interview on Tuesday.

"Assume everybody's a carrier," the mayor told Tur. "And then you start from an even slate, right there, and tell the people what to do. And let the businesses open, and competition will destroy that business if, in fact, they become evident that they have disease. They're closed down. It's that simple."

Congregate-care facilities seem to be the most vulnerable:

The ZIP code covering North Oak Park and other neighborhoods bordering the UC Davis Medical Center has emerged as the coronavirus epicenter of Sacramento. But the sprawling hospital campus that has been treating coronavirus patients for weeks isn’t the source, public health officials say.

...Sacramento County public health officials have declined to offer details about the cases, but acknowledged this week they are tracking three coronavirus infection “clusters” within the ZIP code, all of them at congregate care facilities. The county’s ZIP code data, shown publicly on a map on its website, is based on where infected people reside, not where they are diagnosed or treated.

Citing patient privacy concerns, health officials declined to disclose the names or locations of the three facilities, and declined to say how many confirmed infections have occurred at those sites. County public health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said a cluster is three or more associated cases.

The county defines congregate care facilities as skilled nursing facilities; assisted/senior living facilities; memory care facilities; group homes/board and care; and mental health, alcohol, or drug treatment facilities.

Best explanation I've heard yet why we aren't going to get the tests we need:

It should be obvious what’s going on: The Trump administration is doing everything possible to hamstring states’ capacity to perform the large-scale testing that would be needed to end the lockdowns safely and reopen the economy. When Trump is called out for this, he lies about it. He literally doesn’t want more testing. But why?

...No one is under any illusions that Trump cares about the American public, of course. But mass testing seems like it would clearly be in the president’s self-interest. His best chance at winning re-election is for the economy to be safely reopened, and at least partly recover, before November. But that simply can’t be done without mass testing. Trying to reopen the economy without doing that, as states like Georgia and South Carolina are planning to do, is just likely to cause the virus to spread more rapidly, which will only worsen the economic downturn.

So why is Trump doing whatever he can to prevent the very thing that would give him the best chance of saving the economy and boosting his re-election chances? Why is a notorious narcissist whose only plausible motivation is his own self-interest not doing the one thing that would benefit him in this crisis?

Because Trump isn’t capable of seeing widespread testing — and more accurate information about the spread of the virus — as being in his self-interest. He sees it this way: The more tests that are done, the more confirmed cases are counted, and his impulse is to conceal that larger number if he possibly can. So he’s trying to keep the official case count as low as possible through the only method he understands: Lying and cheating. In this case, by preventing testing such that no accurate count is possible.

Curious Streamline Moderne Building on Arden Boulevard

Normally I pay very close attention to Streamline Moderne buildings in Albuquerque, but here is this great little building right here in Sacramento - My Paradise Mexican Restaurant & Taqueria, 2330 Arden Way, Sacramento, CA 95825.

Bat Coin

Came across my first American Samoa 2020 quarter today, with an Samoan fruit bat and her pup.

Jive Dance-Off

Curtis Park House, At Night

By Bicycle - East, Into Oak Park

Second Avenue tunnel under Highway 99.

Broadway and Stockton Blvd.

Oak park Community Center.

What's this? A pedestrian walkway over Highway 99?

Someone made a "I heart U" sign out of red plastic drinking cups.

Curtis park, which gives my neighborhood its name.

By Bicycle - West, to the Sacramento River

O'Neil Park, where they have a tribal pow-wow once a year, which I once attended with Joe the Plumber.

An abandoned gas station.

Connector between southbound Interstate 5 and eastbound Highway 50.

The Sacramento River!

A goose observed me from the river and flew up to check me out, and perhaps, challenge me to a duel. I wasn't interested in a battle.

Channel 10 antennas.