There can be only one salsa that is the BEST salsa at Quesadilla Gorilla and that is the one on the right: Cilantro Cream.
You can go at me in the comments all you want if you disagree, but you will be wrong.
Fresno is king of Drive-Thrus. We are also the test market for many things fast food – we approved Doritos Locos Tacos (you’re welcome? world).
So why the HELL aren’t we getting this new Taco Bell drive-thru concept first!?
The innovative restaurant reimagines the traditional drive-thru experience with four lanes, three of which are dedicated to mobile or delivery order pickups, providing fast, skip-the-line service for customers who order via the Taco Bell app and third-party delivery services. These three lanes will supplement one traditional lane, easing the flow of traffic and ensuring a speedy experience.
-Somebody at Taco Bell
I guess some town in Minnesota is getting this first.
Really, all our drive-thrus should be this concept or we should trash them and not have any.
Gut wrenching stuff for Fresno architecture this past week.
We first learned that a different group of assholes (different from the Tower Theatre assholes) have taken over the Liberty Theater (Fresno’s oldest) and gutted it:
Before:
Then the gutting:
Like [takes deep breath] THEY REMOVED A WHOLE DAMN BALCONY WITHOUT PERMISSION!
The Fresno Bee’s Marek Warszawski does some great follow up work to find out how they were able to get away with this.
Basically, the city approved them to do SOME demolition inside but not all of what they did and then city never really came out to make sure they were taking care in what they were ripping out, so the contractor had carte blanche to keep ripping.
Fine them. stop construction. do what you can, City of Fresno, but it’s too late now. It’s gone. Can’t get it back.
Is Kylo Ren overseeing renovations?
NEVER, KYLO!
I’ll never join the Dark Side nor will I abide the Liberty being gutted to become a church. It’s NOT what it was meant to be.
It makes me sick. I mean, William Saroyan used to hang out in that balcony – Bill would definitely have been a Jedi, btw.
When I was part of Creative Fresno we helped put on some shows in the Liberty. It gave me the chance to explore all around that theater and I was amazed at how everything appeared to be original.
In fact, the projector room was still there with the old projector equipment, looking like someone just quit one day, in like 1952, and nothing had been touched since.
Now it’s just fucking gone.
The Dumb Drum dudes put together a great video around that time, exploring the theater with (ironically) a focus on the now fucking gone, balcony:
I used to think that a business or church taking over an old unused building, even for some different purpose than the building was intended, was better than it sitting there and rotting away. Not anymore.
Better to sit and rot in faint hope that it one day will be restored, than to be gutted.
As an example, Hotel Fresno sat FOREVER, rotting away. There was a lot of talk that it would be better to just tear it down. But now, people will be staying/living there again WITH as much of the original architecture retained or restored.
So, we can do things properly here, sadly it takes people that respect Fresno. It seems there are a lot of churches around that don’t.
*Pics stolen from Vintage Fresno’s Instagram feedand Miguel Arias.
Hopefully Andrew is cool with me posting his Tower District kitchen renovation.
I thought it was post worthy because of what he found while tearing up his kitchen:
Old Fresno houses are the best. Some more info:
1917. Elizabeth Hagan built the house but maybe because she was a single female or Gundlefinger financed it he always had been the name but found this in demo. pic.twitter.com/f3Ewkp2m9w
— Andrew Feil (@andrewsfeil) August 1, 2021
I love the idea of carpenters and home builders signing boards and stamping things. Especially when it’s something that no one may ever see.
The ISS with solar array in full bloom (pic by NASA just in case you thought I took this)
Sorry if this is yet another thing that makes me a nerd but I like spotting satellites in Fresno’s night sky. Even with our light pollution, its not that hard to do.
If ya think you have never seen one, you probably have and just passed it off as a plane.
The trick to spot them for me is: there are no blinking lights on a satellite.
It is one solid light that looks like a star, but moving smoothly and quietly across the night sky.
If you like watching a small dot move across a screen, here is a video I took of the International Space Station going over the Eastern Fresno sky:
And this equally dorky one across the NW Fresno sky:
I mean, come on now, THAT is some THRILLING ? video people! [sarcasm]
As nerds in Fresno take video of them that you can hardly see, the Space Station crew occasionally takes shots of the Earth below:
The aurora australis is spectacular in these views from the station above the Indian Ocean in between Asia and Antarctica. https://t.co/gzNPCRRjUN pic.twitter.com/VFXye26yWs
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) August 5, 2021
There are websites and apps to help spot things. I sometimes use an app simply called “Satellite Tracker” to find me some info on what I might be seeing – there is a lot of abandoned space junk up there still circling.
You can find a calendar of the ISS’s activities here.
Once you get the hang of it, it becomes pretty easy to spot the random ? satellite – there are many more than there used to be. It usually only takes a minute to find one and I live in the middle of the city.
Also, over the next few weeks the Perseid Metor Shower is going on, peaking August 11-13th. You definitely can catch a few from your patio but those are best viewed outside of the city.