I am like many Fresnans in that I can take the heat. May, June, July, and August is hot and we accept that. Otherwise, we’ll go crazy.
For me though, by the time September rolls around and something upper 90s or 100s shows up, I am like “Hell no! We have all had enough out of you. Get the freaking frack out of here!”
Well, this week is going to be in the upper 90s and 100 plus. And it’s September. Scew that.
If you have the means, I say you get the frick out of here. Might I suggest someone you can go to get away from Fresno for a day or more? These are places I have stayed before or places I want to stay when I can:
I don’t have the money for this today. I blew it a few weeks ago in Yosemite. I will be at work hating life and sweating, hoping my swamp cooler will work at home. But maybe YOU can get out of here.
Get out for all of us. Enjoy life!
And when you come back the weather will finally be better and you can tell us how nice it was to get away.
Amtrack went on their Instagram and decided to drag us.
Every city got its own emoji to represent the town. And what did Fresno get?: The fucking Sun.
That is messed up. What is Fresno’s best feature? The Sun blasts your ass.
You couldn’t have given us almond, or grape, or taco, or Kopi? Well, maybe there isn’t a taco or almond emoji, whatever…but the Sun!? Fuckers.
Side note: Can you get to Yosemite via an Amtrack bus or something because why youz got Yosemite up there?… OH SNAP, I almost forgot about Yarts! The Yarts bus comes by Fresno Yosemite International and the Fresno Amtrak station and it will take ya right on up.
Although the Fresno info on the Yarts schedule seems to be a moving target at the moment, but cool reminder for YARTS.
Whenever I see the Yarts bus going through town I yell out “YARTS!” like a big dipshit because I think it’s cool and I know those people are going into Yosemite.
I am not going to question it, I will just accept it.
The rumors are true. Organizers of Fresno’s Christmas Tree Lane have brought back ‘walk nights’. For you Fresno newbs, this is when they do not let cars go down Old Van Ness and they let people do something totally strange in Fresno… walk
Last year they implied Walk Nights would never come back, but here we are.
As per the tradition, there are two walk nights:
Saturday, December 2nd.
Tuesday, December 12th.
Christmas Tree Lane starts Saturday (Dec 2nd) and is open every night thru December 25th.
The Lane opens every night at 6 PM. Closes (lights off) at 10 Sunday-Thursday and 11 PM Friday and Saturday.
You just park in the neighborhood. I assume people who live in Old Fig hate Walk Nights. But they get to throw parties on Walk Nights, so it’s kinda worth it.
Some people park in Fig Garden Village and take some sort of tram, or get a ride and are dropped off, or walk all the way down to Shields and then walk back.
Heads up: if you do park at Fig Garden Village, it is insane with cars and people. I went to pick up food one night not remembering it was a Walk Night, and got stuck in the Village for a while and didn’t even score food.
I just find a dumb house to park in front of somewhere near Dakota but not South of the railroad tracks.
Hopefully, the return of Walk Nights will relieve some of the pressure of regular car nights when the line to drive Christmas Tree Lane goes down Blackstone all the way to Shaw.
That is right. You basically get in line for Christmas Tree Lane at Shaw.
But hey, screw that, Walk Nights are back. I might hit up both nights, just because.
A nice video that Localish put together a few years ago:
I have always said that Fresno is a great basecamp for visiting the Sierras, most notably our three nearby National Parks: Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia. But I had never really known of someone that actually did it – someone not from here anyway.
A dude named Nick Pisano is spending a year traveling (sounds like a sweet gig if you can get it) with his partner and recently spent a couple weeks using Fresno as a basecamp.
This long blog post by Nick documents his use of Fresno as a base for visiting our nearby parks and … Bakersfield ?♀️ -that is actually a cool part to me, but anyway.
It is a overall good blog post illustrating how a tourist can use Fresno as a basecamp, I want to make that clear.
Buuuuut.
He gave us several shots throughout the post. He tried to be nice about it, but definitely didn’t pass up on chance to deal in digs:
“Not a lot going on here”
“I’ve gone out in search of Fresno, as it were, multiple times here and come up relatively empty each time.”
“relatively sleepy”
“The key to enjoying this city is lowering your expectations”
“a kinda bad city next to some very good things”
“I say this with the utmost respect, but there’s just not a terrible lot going on here. In some ways, it’s the least-happening place we’ve been.”
Woah. Pretty rough.
I will give him credit for going to a Fresno Grizzlies game, the Tower District, and bonus points for visiting the Underground Gardens. He seemed to enjoy those, as he should.
He certainly didn’t do all the things though.
In fact, one major mistake: He did not seem to have much (if any) Mexican food – most notably no mention of tacos:
Next time I’ll show you the stuff the tourist guides won’t
Yep, you KNOW Mike Oz is taking that dude on the taco tour of his life next time.
Speaking of food, going out to eat is a feature for Fresnans. Part of our culture is eating out. When someone visits us, we plan on eating places. It is a “thing to do”.
You can make fun of that if you like but I think it’s cool. It’s a Fresno feature that is underrated.
Also, this guy seemed to not be familiar with the concept of a small city. A working class city. A city for living a life.
Not every town is built to give a shit about tourists. Fresno is one of them.
We don’t have a beach. We don’t have Disneyland. There are no longer any cable cars. A Hollywood sign doesn’t loom over the town. We don’t have a Vegas Strip. We have no plan for someone hanging out for two weeks.
What our “sleepy town” has is people working their ass off and living a life.
Above is a map of all the fault lines in the Central Valley. With the exception of the extreme South Valley, there are no faults on the valley floor.
Yeah? Then how did THIS happen, bro!?
Earthquake outside Lemoore Tuesday night
Sure that is a tiny earthquake. Maybeeee somebody around Lemoore or Hanford felt it, if they were really paying attention, but that’s about it.
How does this happen with no fault lines?
Fracking? Is anyone out there fracking around on the Valley Floor? I don’t know. Maybe.
Even science is not all that sure how this can happen, but there is one explanation:
Earthquakes occurring away from tectonic plate boundaries can be triggered by the rise and fall of hot material through the Earth’s mantle
Woah. “Hot material” eh? We talkin’ magma? Magma? Fun to say it isn’t it? MAG-ma. Come on say it with me, “MAGma”.
Yeah so maybe there is some ancient volcano under the valley floor and stuff. Not to alarm anyone or anything.
Since this quake happened almost directly below Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in Lemoore, I prefer to think it was somebody’s sick drop-in.
Oh since we’re talking about the Surf Ranch, the world famous You Tuber, Casey Neistat, visited the place recently and gave a nice account of what it’s like to get a chance to surf there:
Fresno breakfast places can get pretty damn busy, time to expand the options. So I asked Fresno Twitter to fill in a gap in my knowledge. Hopefully, this helps you too.
Fresnans!! What are some of your favorite breakfasts or brunches from a MEXICAN restaurant or food truck, in Fresno?
I trust my Fresno Twitter folks on this. Much more than Yelp and Google anyway.
Let’s begin with the multiple vote winners. Some have a quick item reco from voters, some don’t. This is nothing definitive, just a helpful guide from Fresnans that know the best Mexican food breakfast in Fresno:
Top Four Recommends:
TOLEDITO’S (1704 Van Ness Ave). The breakfast burritos and Spanish omelet especially.
ZAMORA (850 N. Fresno St). Homemade tortillas and great chilaquiles.
La Hacienda on McKinley & First, mostly because they laughed at my jokes and recognized one time that my family’s from Guanajuato! But fr, their menudo in the morning makes one’s drunken escapades and loneliness a little more bearable. And everything else there is dope.
I did not know this. Sorry, I suck. People kept bringing it up and my dumb ass is like “Should I know what the heck this is? I should, right? Do I eat this and not know what it’s even called?”
Chilaquiles (pronounced “chee-lah-KEE-lays”) is a traditional dish found throughout Mexico. At its most basic, chilaquiles consists of fried tortilla strips simmered in red or green salsa or mole to soften the strips. This dish is great for using up leftovers because stale (or store-bought) tortillas can be used. It’s often served with a side of refried beans.
TripSavvy.com
Ok cool. Now my dumbass knows. Good for hangovers? I like that.
Yelp Reviews To Be Taken With Many Grains Of Salt
Just something I noticed, I don’t know if this is true, but it seems that if you go by what Yelp says, Castillo’s is the place that people from out-of-town think is the best “locals” Mexican breakfast spot to check out. Not sure if some food show came through town once and told them or if this is actually the case.
Anyway, glad to have this list now that you and I can come back to reference when looking for a good Mexican food breakfast in Fresno.
We have a lot of eating to do. Time to get out there and start trying some dishes of chilaquiles!
