Cowbells, Cancer and the Kings!

     Hello Fellow Travelers!

Sir Paul - He still brings it!

I went to the grand opening of the downtown Golden One  Arena which cost millions to build and will be the new home of the Sacramento Kings. It's already revitalizing the Downtown area.  New businesses are taking hold, I like it because it's shaped like a cookie - round.  We saw McCartney perform in Golden Gate Park a year or so ago and that was an outdoor, casual-but-not-really-casual sort of venue.

The crowd in San Francisco was all ages, all colors.  The concert goers were nattily attired, retro-cool and, well, groovy!  The Golden Gate Park event was a day-into-night program with McCartney scheduled last.  As the sun set the coastal fog slowly settled over the City.  and another kind of fog permeated the air over the Park - I love the smell of weed!  I don't partake myself, never did, but the aroma of burning ganja rocks my world!  I rarely get an occasional whiff anymore, let alone an entire cloud! 

By contrast, the crowd in Sacramento was entirely the opposite:  Older, beer drinking and flip-flop wearing, they filed in early and after one obligatory  encore they filed out precisely 2 hours later. 

There was a complete absence of the delightful essence of reefer.  

The new arena is equipped with cutting edge lighting, good views from every seat

 When I went to rock concerts (back at the dawn of time), people held up their lighters to create ambiance (Hey, Jude) or demand an encore ("Play Freebird"!).  Now the fans hold up their Smart Phones with a picture of a flame.  Times, they are a changin'!

Risk averse though I am, I was going to throw caution to the wind and have a gooey drink/dessert involving salted caramel and possibly buy a mug or a t-shirt for a friend 

Again my smallest hopes were cruelly dashed!  Sacramento is not San Francisco, we get that.  Sacramento is the Capitol of the freaking state!

I may be disabled but I'm a foodie!

IPA's?  Handmade Ales?  No.  Budweiser!  Wine?  In a can.  A can!

Come on, people!  We have the Governor! We have the State Fair!   We can do better than this!  Apparently we cannot.  Small wonder Sacramento gets called a "cowtown".

No yummy, sticky  beverage (waters were $5!) scant pricey merchandise (a lousy T-Shirt was $40), not off to a promising beginning!

Kings' Fans have the dubious reputation of being the loudest in the NBA.  Sacramento has embraced the "cow town" nickname.  Fans rattle bovine alerts at every game.  On a local morning program I saw a segment about the new Golden One Center and the local artist who blacksmithed a giant iron cowbell for the team locker room.

No gourmet food but beau coups cowbell!

The PS loves The Kings and I like cowbells and fire so we are looking forward to the basketball season.

Another particularly polite practice that I've come to greatly appreciate is what I call "The Moses Effect" - In Sacramento pedestrians politely part for a wheelchair like parting the Red Sea.  I really value citizens quietly scattering like pigeons in front of my oncoming conveyance.

Makes me a little less bitter at being eye/booty level.

Just a little.

Before I could don a white robe and wheel around parting the sea of Sacramento humanity my PS recalled a far less Biblical image but one just as visually compelling..  The school-of-fish parting of people reminded my PS of the late,  great, Richard Pryor running down the street after he set himself on fire.   He had a point.  If you're ablaze and booking down your street, people will tend to get out of the way.

The Sacramento phenomenon of  humans scattering in front of wheelchairs like schools of fish in a Bahamas promotion video is polite, helpful and makes my life slightly easier.   The fact that this effect reminds him (and now me) of a comedian who freebased so much cocaine he caught fire is irrelevant.  Whatever, it works.  The people evaporate!

So I'm not Charlton Heston.  I'm alive!  And I have a cowbell!