By Bicycle: Various Trips Around the Neighborhood(s)

Sidewalk impression, Freeport Blvd. near Markham Way.

Vizcaya, 21st and U St., which hosts weddings and other parties when it's open.

2020 Election.

Food Bank.

Along the light rail line.

Tattoo shop.

Mural on California Teachers building, Alhambra and Broadway Blvd.

The nice thing about the bike is that it makes exploring mysterious alleys easier, like this one, just south of Broadway Blvd. near 27th St.

Unhappy in love.

Faded mural at California Conservation Corps.

Back side of the Clara.

I like these houses.

Murals on the Regional Transit Building, 29th & N St.

Bench outside Ink Eats and Treats, 28th & N St.

A David Garibaldi mural here!

This house is really purple!

At last, the light rail segment near the Press building (and where bats were living as recently as 2016) is finally free of construction! I need to get out here with my bat-listening apparatus.

Rossi Sculptural Designs.

This excellent urban mural next to the railroad is on a building that used to house the Cisneros School of Dance. I took classes here from about 1999-2006. People like to take promo photos here (LaToya Bufford has taken photos here).

"Are You Good?"

Unlike most dog walkers with their plastic bags ready to collect dog poop, I prefer to carry a pooper scooper with me when I walk dogs. It’s kind of my personal brand on the street.

People have strange reactions upon seeing the pooper scooper. Cops once asked, tongue in cheek, “You need all that shovel for such a small dog?” Another time, 2 nervous teens were relieved to get a closer look. “We thought it was a gun,” they explained.

Tonight (1 a.m. on May 8th) provided a third example. The homeless encampments under the W-X freeway were awfully noisy at 1 a.m. as I dropped some letters into a mailbox at the post office. A restless crowd there.

Jasper and I were walking near the McDonalds when an authoritative woman’s voice asked, “Hey - You good?” I looked up and saw a white woman wearing a kind of poncho propped upon the handlebars of a bicycle ridden by a black man. Both were heading east on Broadway and appeared to be in their early thirties. The woman was in charge. She repeated, “Hey, are you good?” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. They both came rolling over.

“What’s that?” she asked as she gestured toward the scooper. “A shovel?” She looked a bit wasted. Her mouth was open and her eyes were glazed. “It’s a pooper scooper,” I replied. This concept seemed altogether too difficult to grasp. She stated disbelievingly, “You’re walking around with a fucking shovel.” “Yes,” I said. Just too much to absorb.

As they prepared to roll away, she asked, “Where you from, bro?” “Here,” I replied. “I live around here.” They both absorbed this tidbit of information about this weird dude and headed back west on Broadway.

The Integrity Route

Temptation:

Nuñez drove to an ATM outside a Wells Fargo bank branch Sunday morning just two minutes from his Albuquerque home to make his deposit.

As he pulled his truck alongside the machine, he spotted a clear plastic bag on the ground. It was a "foot-long stack" of $50 and $20 bills, he said.

"I didn't know what to do. I was, like, dreaming," Nuñez told CNN. "I was just in shock. I was looking at myself and just thinking, 'What should I do?'"

Nuñez said he never considered keeping the cash -- but all sorts of wild thoughts raced through his mind. Was this some kind of trick? Was someone going to pull up behind him and kidnap him?

With the bank closed on that Sunday, Nuñez called Albuquerque police. Two officers arrived, and the teenager handed over the money.

The officers counted the cash back at their station: It totaled $135,000.

Oh Joy! Premature Openings Coming Soon!

Arizona. It figures:

On Tuesday, The Arizona Republic reported that officials with the Arizona Department of Health Services ordered a team of researchers from two public state universities to “pause” work on a model of the coronavirus pandemic — and limited their access to data.

...“The universities’ model had shown that reopening at the end of May was the only scenario that didn’t dramatically increase cases,” wrote Leingang. “In late April, Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, said the model showed five different scenarios for how the disease could progress in Arizona, depending on how social distancing efforts were relaxed. ‘The slowest curve, based on if the state reopens at the end of May, is ‘the only one that doesn’t put me immediately back on an exponential growth curve,’ Lant said in April.”

The Chinese did this?

WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report)—Enemies of the United States developed Donald J. Trump in a top-secret biotech lab with the goal of wreaking untold havoc on the nation, a leading conspiracy theorist claimed on Monday.

The theorist, Harland Dorrinson, said that he has “conclusive evidence” that Trump was created by enemy scientists as the “ultimate weapon” to bring the United States to its knees.

Live and Let Die:

Sign in my neighborhood and Nogales news story:

After crossing through a port of entry, drivers and passenger get out of their cars and walk through inflatable tunnels that were put up on the side of the road Wednesday by the municipal government of Nogales.

Inside the "sanitizing tunnels," as Mexican officials called them, drivers and passengers are sprayed with disinfectant. They then walk back to their cars and continue on their way.

Various Memes That I Made For DMTC For The Big Day of Giving (May 7, 2020)

By Bicycle - Several Trips Poking Around the Oak Park Neighborhood

Even though I have lived in the Curtis Park neighborhood for 25 years, the adjacent Oak Park neighborhood across Highway 99 is still a bit of a mystery to me. So here are few forays into Oak Park, with some Curtis Park too.

I need a haircut, but it looks like Norm the Barber won't be back for awhile.

5th Avenue crosses highway 99. Who knew?

University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. It's funny, I've never been here before, despite the place arising in conversation over the years. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's special project.

I took a photo of the Bimbo Bakery sign, and was warned by a security guard not to do so.

Oak Park Market.

Weaving back across Highway 99 on 12th Avenue.

They say about a century ago, the Whiskey Hill area (12th & Franklin) was a really hopping place, full of saloons and bordellos. These days, the most exciting place near the intersection is the CVS Pharmacy. And the restaurant that failed to pass city inspection.

Colorful Taqueria Espinoza.

Broadway Costumes, where I've been a sporadic customer since 1993. I wonder if they still have that absurd collection of Easter Rabbit heads?

I need to head down Franklin Blvd. some time.

Sacramento High School. Attended Kashi's high school graduation here about 1992.

Purple project at 34th & Broadway.

Stopped off for an ice cream scoop at Gunther's. I didn't have a card with me - all they would accept at the socially-distanced door - so, the fellow in the turquoise shirt bought the $4 scoop for me! People are generous these Covid days!

Gunther's Ice Cream Parlor in Curtis Park, an iconic Sacramento landmark.

Nice.

I bet it's a Chihuahua!

In an alley near 37th St. & 3rd Avenue. (I posted this in the "Useless, Unsuccessful, and/or Unpopular Signage" Facebook group, where it seems to be big hit. Someone shared the photo to the new "Ominous, Threatening, And/Or Terrifying Signage" Facebook group.

I could hear squealing tires in the distance. Some idiot drove past with a truck deliberately spewing vast amounts of smoke. Santa Cruz and 11th Avenue.

Transitions.

Better Trade Market.

Martin Luther King Jr. Community Garden.

Back at McGeorge School of Law.