The Tower Bridge is a Sacramento icon. Will S.F. miscreants sneak out at night and repaint it like their magnificent international landmark?
San Franciscans are looking to Sacramento, again, to maybe, theoretically, possibly, please God, be able to afford a house that isn’t comparable in price to an NBA franchise.
The Chronicle’s Christian Leonard wrote that “home buyers in the San Francisco metropolitan area check the Sacramento region for listings more than any other destination, according to a recent report from real estate brokerage site Redfin.”
Second was Seattle. After Sunday’s 49ers game, Seattle is used to coming in second to San Francisco.
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Having lived in Sacramento for 10 years, l can assure you that your state’s capital is indeed generally nice. When I came down here in 2013, it was far more affordable than my previous residence of Portland, Ore., which has had an astronomical number of San Franciscans move there over the past few years.
The San Franciscans gamely took on the “Portlandia” zeitgeist, which was about three tokes away from the regular San Francisco vibe anyway.
In Sacramento, the prevailing attitude about San Francisco was, oh boy, we love the 49ers and the Giants but, wow, would it kill you to not make the City of Trees unaffordable?
Gov. Gavin Newsom, you may recall, used to run San Francisco as mayor. When asked, “How often are you up in Sacramento?” the then-lieutenant governor said, “Like one day a week, tops. There’s no reason.”
Newsom wasn’t done. “It’s just so dull. Sadly, I just, ugh, God.”
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People in Sacramento reacted like Sacramentans do, which is: don’t overreact, we hear that all the time, you guys think we’re the next gas station past Nut Tree.
Now Sacramento is a destination resort for the rapidly expanding housing refugee cohort that is even leading some Californians to move to, gulp, Texas and Florida. I just, ugh, God.
Now Sactown Dull is The City cool, and Gov. Newsom lives in Sacramento and doesn’t spend a ton of time in I Just Ugh God Sacramento in favor of visiting various TV studios around the country. Suddenly, a lot of people want to move to Sac.
Since San Francisco’s median home price is about $1.12 million as of October, and Sacramento clocks in on Zillow at $563,000, the miracle of the free market economy suggests that some Sacramentans may find themselves in a seven-figure crib. No ugh, God there for a select few.
There was a minor San Francisco-Sacramento contretemps a few months ago when The City’s basketball team lost a few games before realizing it had Steph Curry.
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The rivalry was chill. Sacramento loves San Francisco. San Franciscans, conversely, generally don’t give Sacramento a second thought, unless the gas gauge shows they’re not going to make it to Lake Tahoe on Friday night.
San Francisco, for all of its Doom Loop national news coverage from Gov. Newsom’s ex-wife’s network of choice, is still pretty awesome, generally. The question is, would relocated affordable home San Francisco people with flowers in their hair and their great sports franchises dig Sacramento? Would they want to change Sacramento into their image? Would they become … Sacramentans?
Sacramento, for example, has just one bridge, Tower Bridge, a charming little gold-spray-painted structure from the Great Depression. Would S.F. miscreants sneak out at night and repaint it like their magnificent international landmark?
Would Elon Musk creep over and buy up everything in order to run it into the ground? Would Musk, given his net worth of $245 billion, be able to snarf up all the affordable homes here? There are 2,969 homes in Sacramento for sale, according to FRED, the division of the Federal Reserve that tracks these things. At $563,000 a pop, that’s about $1.67 billion, couch-change stuff for your friendly local Bay Area Alex Jones enabler.
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AI? We have the state capitol, where a bit of artificial intelligence goes down from time to time. San Franciscans don’t really seem to care much about Sacramento’s gearhead bureaucratic political scene unless Willie Brown is running it. We still can’t rule out that he isn’t.
Sacramento has a mayor, former state Senate President Darrell Steinberg, who, by all accounts, is just about the nicest, most sincere guy ever. No S.F.-level clashes, really. The Sacramento City Council is also pretty sedate, too. The county supes? Snore.
It’s becoming less clear that the Bay Area has a clear line of demarcation, anyway. Is Vacaville in the Bay Area? Nut Tree (everyone loves Nut Tree jokes)? Davis? West Sacramento? We just don’t know anymore. What we do know is that 17,000 San Francisco commuters lived in the Sacramento area in 2017.
As the ambiguous Bay Area blob (sorry, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area) grows into Sacramento and prices out more and more Californians from the housing market, it may well spur a little more urgency within the confines of the Sac-based Legislature to address the problem.
As the new Sacramentafrisco expands, Sacramento has only one demand for new homeowners.
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Can you get Steph Curry to keep his mouthguard in? I just, ugh, God.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and writer. He can be reached at jackohman.net, on Instagram at @jackohman60 and Threads at @jackohman60.
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