Gold and flood: Sacramento, Day 2 (14 July 2017)

Back to Old Sacramento National Historic Landmark District and State Historic Park

We started the day by getting an Uber down to Old Sacramento, as we’d booked a tour for 11am, and thought we’d visit the Sacramento History Museum beforehand. We’ve had some good Uber drivers but this one had a big smile on his face the minute he pulled up. What a lovely way to start the day – and, as we talked to him, we got the sense of a really decent person. Nice.

I have some mixed feelings about Old Sacramento, which aims to reflect Sacramento from 1849-1870 (the Gold Rush years, basically). I love the preservation of old buildings, but the separation and commercialisation of history this way feels vaguely false, and, I couldn’t always tell what was original and what reconstructed. It’s worth visiting because the history it tells is worthwhile, but …

Sacramento History Museum

This is a traditional museum – with not much in the way of modern interactivity – but what it does it does nicely. It includes a working printery which is run by volunteers and which has two printing machines, one from Gold Rush days, and the other a linotype printer from the late 19th century. We got to speak to the volunteer on duty, although no printing was happening the day we visited.

I was particularly interested in the exhibition about the redevelopment of Sacramento in the 1950s/60s. It includes videoed people-in-the-street interviews from the time, and they include, as you’d expect, the usual supporters and naysayers. Plus ça change, and all that!

The other interesting exhibit to me was one discussing the value of Old Sacramento itself, with again the supporters and naysayers – some saying that to know where you’re going you need to know where you’ve come from, and others arguing that a focus on the city at one point in time does not really offer a real sense of Sacramento’s history. I liked the inclusion of something that encourages people to think about how history is presented, and its role.

By the way, Mark Twain worked for The Sacramento Union in the mid 1860s.

Underground tour and some wandering

Then it was time for the Underground Tour, which provided a fascinating insight into the – hmm – ingenious way Sacramento, which is located at the junction of the Sacramento and America Rivers, decided to cope with its flooding rivers of the 1860s and 1870s. Rather than move to higher ground, the city decided to jack up buildings and streets to escape further flooding. We saw hollow sidewalks and learnt how they were managed, walked down sloped alleyways, and went into the underground area. We also learnt about some of the “professionals” who also styled themselves as “doctors”. You could get your hair cut or your shoes shone, and have a little bit of surgery on the side! Apparently.

The tour was done well, with some “real” history told with a light but not frivolous touch.

We followed this with a Mexican lunch (in underground Old Sacramento) and then walked around a little – to check out two historic bridges (the I Street Bridge, 1911, and Tower Bridge, 1935). Who doesn’t love a beautiful bridge?

Crocker Museum

We then walked to the Crocker Art Museum, which occupies three buildings: the old Crocker Mansion, their Gallery (built 1871), and a new building abutted to these two in 2010. The Museum developed from a collection of Californian Art collected by Judge E.B. Crocker, and his wife Margaret Crocker, who gave the gallery to the city in 1885 (ten years after his death.).

It now has a very broad collection across 6 continents. The first items we saw were shields from Indonesian Papua. We enjoyed the museum, though saw very little that was familiar to us. Then again, I suspect visitors to Australia would not be familiar with our Aussie artists, particularly those from the 19th century. We do know some older American artists of course, but clearly not many Californian ones. I was pleased to discover Guy Rose, a Californian who was also one of America’s better known Impressionist artists.

We were intrigued by the current special exhibition of art by another new-to-us painter, Raimonds Staprans. His art is bold, reminding me of David Hockney and our own Jeffrey Smart (though they are very different too). Anyhow, I was therefore tickled to see one piece of his titled, “The development of the Van Gogh Hockney Chair 1989”. Apparently Hockney painted a chair inspired by Van Gogh’s, refining it to his sensibility, and Straprans then “refined” Hockney’s.

There is also a work, a sort of ceramic tile mosaic, that caught our attention, called “All nations have their moments of foolishness”, by Richard Notkin. You’ll see it below and realise why it made us laugh, ruefully.

The Crocker may not be one of the world’s leading art galleries, but we had a very enjoyable time wandering around it.

By this time of the day it was pretty hot – over 35°C.

Farm-to-fork at Magpie

We wanted to have at least one meal in a restaurant promoting itself as farm-to-fork and found a lovely sounding one a few blocks from our house, Magpie. We had a delicious meal – Len a very pretty duck salad, and me a Berkshire pork cutlet (with yummy spicy grits.) We both tried cocktails – Len a beer-based one, and me a lavender gin one. They were yum too. The ambience reminded us very much of Australian’s modern industrial-look restaurants. Minimally stylish, but inviting too.

The service was delightful, but we were surprised to see something new on the docket (or check). We have noticed this trip – and it’s new, we’re sure, since we were last in the USA three years ago –  that restaurant dockets nearly always have Tip suggestions (to save us having to work out what would be, say, a 15%, 18% or 20% tip on our particular bill). But this one had two lines for adding a Tip – the usual one, and one (suggested at 3%) for the Kitchen! Wow. But, you know, when in Rome …

We walked 9kms today – getting less as the temperatures increase.

Today’s trivia

Sacramento spent around 15 years, from 1862, raising the level of its downtown. Property owners mostly used screw jacks to raise their buildings. (A practice that was demonstrated hands-on via a model, during our underground tour).

Today’s images

Still

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