No this is not a post about the Best Pizza In Fresno. It’s a post about Me N Ed’s Pizza. [zing]
Kidding, kidding. I love that damn pizza. Me (Whomever this “Me” character is) and Ed, make a great pizza. A Fresno pizza. Not the best pizza in the world. Not the best pizza in Fresno.
But, it’s the most FRESNO pizza.
What is one of the things you do when someone from out-of-town comes to visit? Show them some Fresno stuff, duhhh. Like:
The electronic billboard at Blackstone & Shaw.
The corner of Barstow & Fruit where Brandau watched traffic for a few minutes, didn’t see a bike and stopped a fully funded road rehab from happening.
The AT&T Store that used to be a Grandy’s.
After that big tour, you’re going to want to take your guest out for some food. Fresno food.
First, you have some tri-tip (either from your backyard grill or [insert your favorite place to have tri-tip here]. Then you have tacos [probably from a place on Belmont]. Then some pilaf [probably your Mom’s]. Then it’s Me N Ed’s Pizza.
Here is the part we need to think about differently
Do NOT frame it as THE BEST PIZZA! It won’t work.
No outsiders will ever think Me N Ed’s is the best pizza. I’m not saying that because I think it’s bad or isn’t the best pizza. I’m saying that because EVERYBODY thinks the pizza from their town is the best.
Me N Ed’s could be the best pizza and it wouldn’t matter. Pizza is the most subjective food in … food. Whatever pizza a person grew up with is what they think is the best pizza and will be closed off from accepting somebody’s pizza as being better.
Close the brick oven, this is how it is and will always be. Everybody’s opinion about pizza is the right opinion. No use trying to change it.
So, when you do order up some Me N Ed’s delivered or head down to a location where you can pour your own beer, like my favorite one at Bullard & West, frame the argument differently.
Say, “This is our take on pizza. It’s a very Fresno thing [well, Valley and Lakewood thing]. It is local. We love it (mostly). You probably won’t and that is okay.”
Order your Valley Veggie. Order your pepperoni & canned mushroom. Move on.
If you’ve been reading my blog long enough, you know that I have stretches of time where there is not much posting – or I just give up. I am in one of those stretches.
The lack of posting this time comes from a combination of post ideas that are not good enough for me to write about, or good ideas I don’t have the time to put together. So here we are.
Comments are still there, just different
There is an update to give regarding posting comments to this blog. I got a rash of spam comments. Like, 100 spam comments a day. It took a long time to delete all the comments that had built up. In the process, I lost some of your legit comments. Sorry about that.
So now I have had the change the way commenting is done on the blog. You have to sign into a user name and password of some kind. It sucks because it creates a bit of a roadblock for people to easily comment.
BUT, I have not had to deal with even one spam comment since changing this comment policy. So that is cool for me. But sucks for those that comment. Hopefully, we can still keep a healthy commenting community going in future posts, even with this extra step.
Fresno things still are happening
Not sure you’re aware but there is a kinda new Flowing With Famous podcast up. Josh and I got to go on 2 Guys Talkin’ Fresno, which was pretty cool. While there recording I got to finally meet former Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, I was pretty stoked.
I can’t review things. At least I can’t in a traditional way. Especially music. The words and descriptions needed for a good album review is something I never have been able to figure out.
I mean, hell, look at a recent review of Power Trip’s “Opening Fire” by Any O’Connor in Pitchfork:
On “Divine Apprehension,” sprightly, major-key thrash tics ride above the maelstrom. …
…They’re more blatant about their influences here, and these tracks thrive on the youthful charm of aping what you love.
Andy O’Connor
Above the MAELSTROM? Aping what you love? What the hell is a maelstrom because it feels like I would be aping if I ever was in one.
Yeah, I can’t write this kind of stuff. This is why I stay away from review things too much, especially music.
But, I love Fresno music. I want more people listening to Fresno music. So here we are. Let’s talk a little bit about the new EP from Fresno’s Eighteen Hunderds called “Moon Cults”.
A music genre is born
The Eighteen Hundreds proclaim to be a Ghost Surf band. This is cool because I don’t believe Ghost Surf is a known genre of music and this may be the beginning of how we describe a particular sound.
A sound that does seem to run through a lot of Fresno and South Valley bands. Partly because of shared band members and partly because of local bands influencing one another.
However the Ghost Surf sound is happening, I love it and hope it becomes a thing. Lets begin listening so we can calibrate our ear for Ghost Surf.
Moon Cults
The track “Colleen” is about a ghost that haunts the basement of a Tower District house and has a new video to go along with it:
The whole album is up on the band’s Bandcamp page, which you can listen to here and download, if you so desire:
Before you go, listen to the band’s previous effort, “Sun Cults”:
For you record nerds, the band plans to press some vinyl for “Moon Cults” and their previous effort, “Sun Cults”, by the Summer.
Follow the band on social and through the website so you know when they play next. Let’s continue to make Ghost Surf a thing!
I always worry these kinds of posts are too hacky, but I am doing it anyway. It’s actually kind of fun going through the posts from this year because some of them I had already totally forgotten about.
Rather than boring you and posting each one, please let me just remind you of the ones that you, the reader of The Fresnan, thought were the most popular.
I pulled the nine buzziest, starting from January and ending now. These might not have been read the most but had the most “action” (sharing/reading/comments).
One of the more significant things to happen on Fulton Street this year. I have yet to set foot in the place but that didn’t stop me from posting about it.
I have been lobby two of California’s best indie breweries (that are building remote taprooms), Modern Times and Fieldwork, to come to Fresno. If they want to truly make some noise, they should. Now that Zack’s Brewing is open Downtown, this is less relevant. Still would like to see it happen though.
If I did this post today, I would choose Salsa. I did a poll on my Instagram and Salsa won. I personally use salsa as much as I use ranch but at the time I was ranching more so I went with it. This is a forever debate. Salsa now wins.
Having salsa but no chips left is a bad place to be.
There are many Fresno eatin’ holes that you have to wait to get seated. Too often, people get a table at these places and then linger while you wait impatiently, staring at these yahoos. Ya done eating? Then get the hell out.
6. I rode my bike to Pine & Palm and nobody flipped me off.
Biking needs to be more of a thing for me in 2019. I did some of it this year but not enough to talk about it, this time being the exception. I even found a “hidden” bike path.
It’s official. I became an old man this year. When the scavengers became too messy and started dumping my recyclables into my trash bin and on the street, I decided to take passive aggressive action.
While it’s true I live in the middle of Fresno. But I also live in a county island so I couldn’t actually vote for Measure P. That did not stop me from ranting about it though.
No drastic changes planned to the blog. My goal is to have a new post every week, at least, usually by Wednesday mornings. But I did not follow through on that for much of the year. Hopefully, I can do that all the way in 2019.
The one change you might see involves monetizing the blog.
I have never seen cash in my hand or in my checking account, because of this blog. You would think after blogging so many damn years I would have figured out how to make money at it.
I have tinkered with being an Amazon affiliate but it doesn’t work well for the posts I write and the traffic I get. Plus, Amazon is a pretty shitty employer, so I feel dirty working with them anyway. I will likey be backing away from that.
Target has approved me to be an affiliate but I have not started messing with that yet. Yeah, I guess Target has a slightly better conscience than Amazon so I feel …okay? using them
You might see me give that a try on a post or two or a banner ad. Oh look, there is one now!:
Google Adwords is a thing but throwing a bunch of banners around to make $20 a month does not sound worth it to me.
I’m thinking hard about starting a Patreon
If you have not heard of the website called Patreon and you are a creative, you might want to check it out. It enables people that like what you produce to donate money to you.
The cool part is, the creator has the opportunity to give extra content to the person willing to give them a few bucks a month.
We do it on the Perfect Pour and it has worked out pretty well. It at least is enough that the show pays for itself, which is a victory to me.
Anyway, man, thank you for reading the Fresnan this past year and whatever year you have read it. I’ll keep posting if you keep giving a damn.
Part of the RETAIL APOCALYPSE, just shitty landlords or both. This place is dead. And no, Halloween Superstore does not count!
There is not one tenant at the back of West & Shaw, now that Nina’s Bakery has moved (Remember when it was a Pioneer Chicken? No? Ok. I guess I am old then).
I know nothing of the landowner other than they are not into their property.
They seem content with their tenants closer to Shaw Avenue (Starbucks, Taco Bell, Broilers and Colorado Grill). Not giving two shits about how the property looks or what a blight it is to the neighborhood.
I have not seen one improvement to that building since the long-closed Chinese buffet place was put in. And just look at the lovely landscape:
It feels like we should be ripping the whole thing out and putting up a condo building, instead of another retailer that will move out in a year. This feels like the trend we should head for in Fresno. If the lot can not maintain a business, make it a residence. Infill it.
A park would be nice too but we know that ain’t happening.
Developers whine about Fresno’s Master Plan and how they want seemingly endless amounts of land to keep building track suburban houses. Yet, roaming around Fresno as I do for my Day Job, I see SO MUCH land being underused, misused, or not used at all, it makes me want to FREAKING FRESNO THE FUCK OUT!
So I started Dead Lot, a first in a hopeful series of post, in the faintest of hopes that it will spark something somewhere to improve Fresno’s lame negative space. Fresno has a lot of negative space.
Hell, I hear that Save Mart fixed their PA after my post, let’s see what other weird things we can get accomplished here.
