I recently caught the Tower Rats (a Fresno punk, indie rock, post-punk band) at Goldstein’s in the Tower District. It was only my second time seeing them (first being at Porchfest). I was glad I went.
Excellent performance; kept me engaged the whole show, with everyone in the band bringing everything they had.
There seem to be two versions of this band, though. I am not saying that as a bad thing! Just an observation.
I am guessing that the guitarist writes songs and the band plays those. And the singer writes songs, and they play those. I just bring it up because you can tell there is a difference between the two.
Normally I would not think this kind of thing would work, because the songs are slightly different genres. But Tower Rats do, in fact, make it work.
No matter who is writing the songs, they are both dynamic and worth checking out if you haven’t.
Yes, what I am doing this weekend is what everyone else is doing on Saturday, it’s Porchfest – it’s one of my favorite Fresno things.
I have not locked in planning my day yet (because I am not that kind of person), but I do know some things, my loose schedule of the day I will try to have:
Shout out to the Medium WelDON porch for the best dad-joke stage/porch name.
Starts at 10 in the morning. I am going to ‘Dad you’ here and tell you to drink some water and wear some sunblock. And also, nobody needs to know what is in your water bottle.
P.S. Don’t forget there is something cool to do on Sunday, too, you just have to take the short drive up to Madera, it’s Spring Fling! Classic VW car show.
The old Laucks Bakery in the Tower District, picture from France Is Hexagonal
I don’t mean to age myself too much here, but I am old enough to remember having the peanut butter cookies from Laucks Bakery in the Tower District. It is one of my first food memories. And they were so good.
No peanut butter cookie has measured up to it. My Mom’s are the closest and are delicious. But the Laucks used to really hit.
I am seeking comfort lately, and a peanut butter cookie that tastes like a Laucks cookie would really fill a hole right now.
So who has the recipe? What’s the fucking secret?
Nobody wants to post the recipe (at least I can’t find where), as if this needs to be kept secret anymore.
This has also put me on a quest to find the best peanut butter cookie in Fresno. Maybe the smallest quest ever, but it’s still a quest. If you have some thoughts on this, tell me where to go.
Editor’s note: I will be doing more personal log style posts here on The Fresnan with expansions of some of the Fresno!Fresno! content. Hope you enjoy and check my website more often as a result.
I was one of 3 old dudes at Goldstein’s last night. I don’t know to think if this is pathetic or something to be proud of.
Probably a bit of both.
Pathetic: Why are you out in The Tower alone as a 50 something dude? Go home and pull weeds or do dishes or some shit.
Proud: Nobody else in my age group out here checking out local bands and enjoying a beer, walking miles home.
I got that video just as the Goldstein’s crowd gave up trying to start a little pit. That band was not playing pit appropriate music but, dammit, folks wanted to pit.
For the younger Fresno crowd, this has been a staple of every Fresno generation; Fresnans love even the tiniest excuse to start a pit. Bless our little hearts. Do we need to grow up? Maybe. But it makes us kind of adorable too.
I decided to check in on Livingstone’s (It has been a while for me) and have a General Sherman IPA from our own Tioga.
The bar had just enough people to give me a sense of enough going on that I wanted to stay. But soon enough, a large amount of people came in and it was too much for this guy, so I headed back over to Gold’s and caught some more Fresno talent:
As I wandered the streets home, contemplating life, I am pretty sure I saw Fresno Jesus wink at me as I walked by:
This new bike lane on Van Ness (You know, the Van Ness you never think about because it is not Old, Extended or Downtown) has everyone all messed up.
Admittedly it is some weird looking shit. It requires processing. And processing we are.
Maybe the best thread I saw about it came from a local musician’s on Facebook. We will call him T.
I always feel a little queasy pulling Facebook threads out here into the open part of the Internet so I won’t use any real names of people in these quotes but they are real and sum up the bike lane drama:
The fact that they took so many parking spaces away in front of people’s homes makes no sense at all. Besides passengers aren’t normally looking for bicyclist on their side if the car when they get out so there’s that hazard. I don’t even want to know how much of our money they spent researching this lovely idea.
L
It’s a drunken stagger zone. For City liability insurance. Only intoxicated Fresnans work or travel through this area. It is known.
K
From what I’ve observed, almost no one is using this properly–almost everyone just parks their car against the gutter as they always did, totally blocking the new bike path. I wonder if they sent out a notice or anything.
N
Doesn’t make sense to me. I would rather not ride in a bike lane sharing the road with cars without any concrete divider. I do not trust drivers. I ride my bicycle on the sidewalk as long as there’s no pedestrians around.
D
It’s nuts! I wouldn’t park in those spaces! You might a well put a target on the back of your car! 2am catastrophe
F
Yes, this was a total fail. Half the parking is gone, and now the bike lane is useless because people are using it for parking. Here’s my proposal. Go back to curbside parking, and turn all that new parking weirdness into a big fat bike lane.
L
This is the lane in question:
When you go a little further up the road next to FCC, those college educated kids are having problems too:
Parking in the designated parking area inevitably puts cyclists at risk as most will go around the truck into the street instead of in between the vehicles.
Why isn’t there clear parking instruction signage to keep people from parking in the bike lane? pic.twitter.com/u9lipZpofs
I ride that route fairly regularly. It is an adjustment, but the idea is to separate bikes from moving traffic. And it reduces the chance that you ride into a quickly-opening door.
T
Ha ha! Tell me about it. Complete Streets are something that the org I work for espouses, but I don’t like them when I’m driving, huge hypocrite that I am. It makes sense to stop designing our transportation systems solely around making it easier for cars. Perhaps making the world safer for bikes will encourage more people to ride?
C
I don’t known that my opinion is valid since I only drive on there occasionally and can’t remember the last time I rode a bike through there.
But, I will still say, it feels like we are scared of this new thing. It will be confusing at first but we will get it. Some street has to be the street we learn on, might as well be regular old Van Ness.
I believe protected bike lanes are a build-it-and-they-will-come sorta thing, not a “Look at all these damn bikers, they need more lanes!!” kinda thing.
And one day it could be as pleasant as this (found on mmwpro63’s feed):
When we're looking at improving cycling, so much focus is given to big cities.
Yet often, it's small cities—especially college towns like Eugene—that make the greatest gains in the least time; refining best practices, sharing with others, and acting as incubators for good ideas. pic.twitter.com/jQjPFvbA8M
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