sacramento

Spending the weekend in Sacramento with my mom and sisters before heading back to Los Angeles this next week. I had to go downtown today to meet with Sabina, a GM that is helping me with the Safeway accounts in Northern California. Her home store is on the K street mall so I met with her and then walked around. Back in the day, the K street mall was the hub of downtown Sacramento. The capital is just a block over from the mall. The whole area has gone through some booms and busts and the city is now trying to revitalize the mall with some success. There were three movie theaters on the Mall that my friends and I went to all through my high school years. The Showcase Theater is gone now but back in the '80s it showed the Rocky Horror picture show every Friday night at midnight. It also showed foreign films and independents that didn't normally make it to the theaters in the suburbs. My friend Andrea Forsyth's dad, took us the summer of my junior year to see a double bill of Five Easy Pieces and Carnal Knowledge. Not what you'd expect your friends dad to do but he was way cool. He was the political editor of the Sacramento Bee and David Roberti's Chief of Staff when Roberti ran the Senate. My mom was not too happy when I told her what we saw that night.
The Crest theater is on the mall and has been restored to all it's art deco glory. My sophomore English teacher brought our class here as a field trip to see the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet.


The Box office is completely restored as well and I love the detail on the back. Buildings had so much more interesting details then.

The Esquire is down the Mall near the convention center and has also been redone. At night it is very striking.


Crossed the street and walked in the capital park to try and continue my trudge towards fitness. The leaves on the trees are still striking in the fall colors. I was mesmerized by this tree. I don't think I quite caught how gold the leaves were. There was a whole row of these trees together and the colors were spectacular.

As I was walking back to my car , this group caught my eye. It looked like a quincenera party that was having photos taken for the occasion. The young lady in red was the birthday girl and she was carrying a wand and had a tiera on. I missed the opportunity to take their photo as they approached and I didn't have enough courage to stop them to try and take a photo.

lurching down memory lane...

In the Bay area for some meetings today and decided to have dinner at one of my old college haunts, Zachary's Pizza. Zachary's is a Berkeley institution off of Solano Avenue in North Berkeley. When I was at Cal in the early '80s, a great Friday night was dinner at Zachary's with a pitcher of beer and then a double feature at the Oaks cinema two doors up the street.
I think the apex of my movie watching was one night after dinner and a few pitchers of beer, I saw a double bill of Pretty in Pink and Delta Force. You wouldn't think that's the ideal double feature but after two hours of Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy, Chuck Norris kinda kicks butt. Especially with the beer added in.
Charles and I had a nice dinner tonight,sans a pitcher of beer and then headed back to the hotel. No movie, I have to be in Fresno by 10 am tomorrow.

a necessary evil

Dinner with Karen the other night. We went to my favorite fall spot: the counter at Musso and Franks.Karen had never been so we went and had a nice night. I always snag a seat by the grill and watch the chef cook the chops brought over by the waiters and sip my vodka martini. The grill gives off a nice warm heat. I always order the pounded steak with gravy and lyonaise potatoes. One sip of that drink and all is right with the world. I can almost accept Cal's crushing defeat at the hands of Stanford....... Almost.

things you don't see everyday....

Driving up La Brea this afternoon and was stopped at 3rd street when I saw this coming towards me. Kind of random but what a cool car! I thought maybe it was advertising something but it is apparently just an everyday vehicle with a little something extra.

Traffic was a little heavy as I approached Hollywood so took some side streets to get to Gower and saw this off of Santa Monica Blvd as well as the obigatory transvetite

autumn in the central coast

The grapes have been picked and soon the vines will be bare and not too attractive but for right now..what a glorious view as I wound down the 101 back to LA yesterday.

driving up the central coast

Spent my Sunday driving up the coast for a early morning meeting in San Luis Obispo tomorrow. Laura, my franchise training manager flew into the Santa Barbara airport from Denver. Picked her up and we drove up to San Luis Obispo along the 101.
I really take this drive for granted and seeing the coast and the central coast through someone else's perspective was interesting. The vineyards are now lines of gold on the hills next to the 101. So beautiful. I know the leaves will be gone by my next trip. Should have taken a shot, maybe on the way back down the coast


We had dinner in Avila Beach at the custom house. Food was ok but the view was spectacular. It was 75 degrees today and warm and balmy this evening. Really nice day.


The sunset was amazing, lots of orange, red and purple in the sky.

Houston

Spent this past week in Houston for business. Not the most scenic of cities but the food was pretty darn good. I ate at Antone twice.Fried Oyster Po'Boy!! Delicious

The oysters were hot and juicy and nestled in a soft bread bun with mayo, tomatoes and chow chow mix. I got a side of jalapenos stuffed with Pimento cheese as a nod to my southern heritage.

Everyone in my group was sent to different cities in Texas to do in depth store visits. Matt and I were sent to Houston, Mary Jane to San Antonio, Charles to Austin and Rick and John went to Dallas. Everyone likes to eat and send each other shots of lunch or dinner and Pappasitos was a stop on every one's list this trip.
I have a soft spot for Pappasitos since it is the same concept that Chevys was when I first started working for that company in the early '90s. The Simmons family bought the catina concept idea from the Pappas brothers and opened up in the Bay area. The food,service, plating et al was exactly the same in a Chevys as it was in a Pappasitos when I started working for Chevys. A visit to the Pappasitos always brings back memories of what once was until Pepsico and others destroyed the concept.
Matt and I headed over on our last night for dinner and started with chips and salsa. Service was somewhat crappy but the food was terrific.

Half and half fajitas with guac and pico. The tortillas were wonderful as well,fresh, hot and just off the press. Rice and beans ala charra and I was a happy camper. Matt was too until he got a call from his credit card company the next day that someone at Pappasitos tried to charge $5000 on his card. That's a lot of fajitas.