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.
https://twitter.com/npisano/status/1532132868310282240?s=21
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
— Mike Oz (@mikeoz) June 2, 2022
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.
Hi there! Thanks so much for the write-up of our time in Fresno. Hope it didn’t come off as unduly harsh – it’s a little bit of an “it’s not you, it’s me” situation. Our visit came at the end of a pretty busy stretch of traveling and we were pretty run down, so I’ll be the first to admit I could have probably worked a bit harder to get the real Fresno experience. The city and the area really did grow on me by the end of our time there, so I’ll certainly be back someday for some tacos!
Hi, Nick. Thanks for commenting. I think you were fine, really. I just think no small city could hold up to two weeks of a person hanging out and not knowing anyone. Only chance would be if you were a foodie or beer geek or something like that or was really into whatever that small city was good at. You definitely exposed us as not a tourist town. I appreciate your post. Be safe and have fun out there traveling! ?✌️?