Wide open

Wide open. After more than two years in town, that’s how Sacramento feels to me sometimes. Big, flat, open spaces to travel across. Long, broad expanses to look over. Six-lane suburban roads. Endless rows of tract homes. Rivers with no beginnings or ends in sight. A stopping-off point, a town forever lodged at its own crossroads. A faceless, nondescript place that refuses to reveal itself. Indeed, a wide-open space.

Reading SN&R takes me beneath the surface of Sacramento in a way nothing else does. Every week, our writers render this town’s character and diversity with details that reveal Sacramento in new and different ways from my own personal and limited experience.

In this week’s cover story, “Harder, faster!” R.V. Scheide takes us into a mosh pit at a Slayer concert as he delves into the world of heavy-metal music. We see that this music isn’t cerebral or cool; it’s all about getting physical. We meet local metal heads pounding out speed metal in local churches—some of the only underage venues available to these suburban kids.

Our lead news story, “The new, old uptown,” shows the beautification of Del Paso Boulevard and wonders whether this latest attempt at revitalization will be enough finally to turn the area into Sacramento’s next hip, trendy urban experience. In another story, “Count on it,” readers tag along on a pre-dawn trip to count the city’s homeless. Then, a psychologist explains the post-Super Bowl despair Sacramento’s men undoubtedly experience at the end of the football season.

In Arts&Culture, we peer into the minds of local writers—winners of SN&R’s second annual Flash Fiction contest. In Guest Comment, we see into a loft-dweller’s heart through her valentine to her new downtown digs. And our essay brings to life a decade-ago encounter with Molly Ivins (the Texas columnist famous for referring to Bush as “shrub”) who died of cancer last week.

There’s much more in today’s SN&R. Read us today and often. Our aim in trying to render the character of Sacramento upon its own wide-open canvas is to make you feel at home—to touch you where you live. Let us know how it’s working.