Respecting the Bee’s People’s Choice Awards, I have my own asshole blogger version. Welcome to The Fresnans. Some random Fresno junk that was SO Fresno for me this year.
Top Street: Bullard. Yep, that’s right, BULLARD! Sorry, I am no longer a Tower District person, I am a NW Fresno person (with much love and respect to South of Shaw), and I used the HELL out of Bullard this year.
Best Fresno Beer: I am tempted to say Tioga’s Sequoia’s “All The Mornings” but I have only had it twice so that really can’t count. Full Circle made a nice New England style IPA. Pine & Palm keeps getting better. But my “go to” has been Mt. Whitney XPA from TS.
Best Coffee: My coffee-maker. Look, man, I don’t have time for that Dutch Bros drive-thru or to find a local place. I need my caffeine quickly and nothing performs better than my coffee-maker and some Coffemate French Vanilla creamer.
Food Dish: Dude. Have you had a L.A. Roll at Edo-Ya before? Holy crap. If you are into sushi AT ALL, this is the greatest thing ever. It took me 20-years of going to Edo-Ya before I tried one (I have been very slow to try sushi) and it is amazings.
Worst Traffic Light: We could be here a while with this one. Pretty much every single one that doesn’t have a turn arrow, for starters – that’s dangerous, ya know. But personally, it’s Fruit & Bullard. If you have ever tried to get through the light while traveling on Fruit, before 8:00 in the morning, you know what I mean. The fucking thing takes five LONG minutes to change and gives no shits that you are late for work.
Best District: I kinda want to say the “Taint District”. What is the taint district? Well, it’s the area around Willow & Nees, Herndon & Willow… you know… the “taint” of Fresno & Clovis (thanks, Bells). House of Pendragon and Kuni Sama did rather well for me this year, in the Taint District. But that’s too North Fresno/Clovis to be cool so I’ll just say South Of Stadium in Downtown Fresno.
Favorite Fig Garden Village place: I went to or picked up food at Jack’s a lot this year. In fact, I suspect they are still in business because of me.
Drive Thru Of The Year: No we should not be all about drive-thrus here. But, we are. I spent a lot of time in the Palm Foster Freeze drive-thru, so I will go with that one. The Bullard & West Dutch Bros fascinated me all year but I rarely used it. I miss the Taco Bell drive thru at Barstow & Blackstone.
Local Media Person: I want to say Joshua Tehee of the Fresno Bee but he is a friend and fellow podcast host so that doesn’t seem right. Evan Onstot seems pretty cool so I will choose him. Shout out to Bill Mac getting back into his Bee-ness.
Biggest Fresnan Post: I took a couple or three years off of blogging. This year I could not help but come back. I am glad I did, even though sometimes I have trouble writing about… things. But, by more than double, the most read post of 2016 for The Fresnan is 5 Most Annoying Parking Lots In Fresno.
Tweet Exchange Of The Year: I have never had the pleasure (I assume it’s a pleasure) of meeting Mayor Ashley Swearengin. Maybe one day. I look forward to it. In the mean time, I treasure exchanging Tweets with her that involve my Harrison Ford/Indiana Jones nerdness:
Well, I could go on forever but let’s save something for the 2017 awards. Looking forward to expanding The Fresnan’s reach in 2017 (whatever that means) and following what happens to Fresno (like the Fulton Street opening up) in the coming year.
Thank you so damn much for reading this blog! Cheers!
-Mikey
