I seem to have a certain fascination with places that are in some state of abandonment or in other ways broken. Sacramento has a lot of these areas. Detroit as an entire city seems to be faced with widespread abandonment. My home town on the north coast also has some of these elements. Traditionally it was a fishing village and lumber town but both of these industries have been greatly reduced in size and scope. While tourism has replaced some of the void – there is still a sense that the town needs something.
The north coast is a beautiful place and I have hope that that this sense of abandonment for the area is not permanent that some sort of regeneration will occur. I think this video, full of images of my home town speaks to a lot of these issues:
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Very powerful song and video. It provides a different prospective of the Sacramento area. Has local government done anything to bring in new jobs? Also, how did the trees become over-harvested. I thought that there were rotation schedules for tree cutting.
Actually that video is about the north coast of California about 4 hours north west of Sacramento. There are still trees but it takes many years for redwoods to grow large enough to harvest. Local economy is small business now and tourism.
There are a lot of abandoned places in the Sacramento region – land was plentiful here and instead of making improvements, many times people just moved to new areas and left older areas to decay.
Great post! I also feel the same sense of passion towards areas and towns that seem to be lonely and depressed. I live in Colorado and we still have some old mining towns that have tons of charm that are basically ghost towns. I love taking the family to these forgotten areas and just walk through them to take in the history.
Very powerfull song for sure! Thanks for sharing this with us.
Yes very powerful video, before looking at your blog I never thought of Sacramento this way at all.