It’s been mixed feelings about Ragin’ Records opening up a place in River Park.
First you’re like “Wait. WHAT!? River Park? But Ragin is, like, TOWER, dude. Metal. Punk. All subculture and stuff!”
River Park is not that.
When River Park went in it was mostly chains and a movie theater. North Fresno. The death of Fashion Fair. Sprawl. A traffic circle we didn’t get.
It was exciting and new, but no heart. Felt like it shouldn’t be.
Over the years it has evolved. Either by design or by necessity it is maybe a little more local – at least the core is.
Teazers. Barrelhouse. Coney Island Me&Ed’s. That place that used to be the sports bar. You know, stuff like that.
It feels more Fresno and I don’t know how to describe it to you more than that. Maybe it has just been there long enough.
So I guess after you work it out, it is okay that River Park has a Ragin’ Records now. Especially since it is in the parking garage (which makes it totally punk).
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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.
They thought they could fool me with the blue cheese and caesar dressing
You mother. fuckers. You did it to me again, Whole Foods Fig Garden. I built my salad only to discover NO FUCKING RANCH?!?!
Are you getting back at me for this post? Is Jeff Bezos so cheap he is instructing you not to put out ranch?!
When you start filling the salad bar in the morning, the first thing you should put out is the ranch. If you don’t have it, put up a sign that says “We are out of ranch. Salad bar closed indefinitely.”
I am putting your salad bar on suspension for the next year. Also, you suck.