We don’t have a Midtown in Davis, so to get my Midtown kicks I had to go to Sacramento, the state’s capital city fifteen miles away. It’s been a couple of years since I sketched around Midtown, but I always enjoy wandering about those streets looking at all the big old houses. It’s not like they have as many shops as they used to; the fantastic University Arts store closed recently, and that was always a big draw for me. The record shop called The Beat closed years ago, though there is a small record shop in Midtown which I did visit. We did come to Midtown before Christmas to have a couple of cocktails at the Jungle Bird, a little tiki bar we like that does a festive ‘Jingle Bird’ theme in December. On this one Saturday though, I was itching to get out of Davis and draw, so found myself in Midtown at the Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park. It’s been years since I went there, although I have never wandered into the actual Sutter’s Fort itself; I thought about it though, and it’s the fort that counts. I repeated that joke to myself several times wondering if it would ever be the right time to say that to anyone, but it never will be. It evolved into a joke that went, “someone gave me a calculator shaped like a castle for my birthday; wasn’t much of a gift but it’s the fort that counts.” I think that sounded alright, but it doesn’t really work out here, where they don’t pronounce ‘fort’ and ‘thought’ as the exact same sound like we do in London. If I said that I’d probably be accused again of ‘British humour’ (sorry, ‘humor’), “I don’t like Briddish humor, it’s all Monty Pythaan.” People have actually said that to me, as if British humour or comedy is a genre. I will confess though we are the best (or worst) at puns and I will go to extreme lengths to get one in. Alas I let the ‘fort’ jokes go, at some point you have to realize they make pretty crap puns anyway. I sketched the scene above while listening to another Terry Pratchett audiobook, Feet of Clay (I have listened to five in the past month, really spending down those Audible credits). The building opposite is the State Indian Museum, and the church tower on the left is a place I have drawn several times (early 2007 was the first!) and always forget the name of. St. Francis of Assisi, that’s the one. It was the first place I drew in Midtown Sacramento and I was well pleased with how it turned out. I was going to colour in all the trees but stopped at the pool, because I liked the way the colour of the water stood out, and so I just added the shades; this is all it needs.

I wandered Midtown looking for big old houses to sketch, these ones were on L Street and I sat on my little stool across and drew. I decided to bring my stool out, I don’t usually take it with me these days, as I prefer to stand and sketch, but I knew I’d want to sit and I’m glad I did. There were a lot of details and the shades and colours were very inviting; I wanted to get a feel for what a sunny early-afternoon in Midtown in January felt like. I used to come to Midtown years ago for the occasional Saturday sketching day, my wife would drop me off (as she did on this day) and I’d get the bus back in the evening, or the train, to Davis. It got me out of the house on a Saturday. The first year here I worked in Saturdays at the Avid Reader, as well as a couple of evenings a week doing their book-keeping, on top of my full-time job. I had nothing else to do, so I worked and got to known the downtown. When I quit the Saturday shifts to get some free time back, I had a bit more time to sketch on the weekends. I didn’t know Midtown at all, but my wife had heard it was interesting and had a good record shop and an art shop, as well as a British themed pub called ‘the Streets of London’ (British isn’t a genre of pub I said), but they served London Pride and had football shirts and scarves up on the wall near the dartboard, so it was close enough. She was studying for a master’s at the time so getting me out gave her some study time, and this was around the time I started sketching way more than ever before, 2006-2007, mostly in WH Smith sketchbooks from the UK then (British isn’t a genre of sketchbook) but I got my first watercolour Moleskine in 2007 and still use them today. An exciting time of discovery in a new place, I guess. Long time ago now but my eyes are still wide open looking for things to draw.

I mooched around a bit more. Do they say ‘mooch’ over here? To mooch means to wander about casually, like we would go for a mooch around the shops. I think when they say it here it means something else (begging?). I like a bit of an old mooch. British vocabulary isn’t a genre. The area of Midtown centred on Capitol Avenue is called the ‘Capitol Mansions’ district and there are some amazing old houses down here, big ones too, on tree-lined streets. This building above is a law firm I think, but I was just impressed by its size as I walked down the street. It doesn’t look that big on my page but it felt grand, and that tree was thick and mighty. The city of trees, Sacramento is sometimes called. River City too, and Sac-o-Tomatoes. Big tomato farming industry in this area, you see the trucks on the freeway filled to the brim with tomatoes. I was starting to get hungry as I sketched now so I ended up adding the colour afterwards on this one.

This was another impressive house that is very typical of the type you get in Midtown, and it was colourful too but I did not paint it. In fact with this one I did only draw the outlines while there, and drew the rest in later, as I was pretty hungry. I ended up not really eating much, except for a big slice of cake at the Dessert Diner on J Street. That is a place to visit if you are ever in Midtown, they do delicious cakes.

This is Rocket Records on 24th Street, a nice little record shop I have been to once before. Not as big as The Beat was but they have a lot of good stuff; I picked up a copy of Paul McCartney’s Ram album, which I had never owned before. I was pleased to find it wasn’t in the ‘British Music’ section, which didn’t exist, because British isn’t a genre of music. I am really enjoying my record player, since I got the new one in September, and now visiting record shops is becoming a thing again both for me and my son who is also now getting into vinyl. I had to sketch the store of course. I had also just visited the camera store nearby, Mike’s Camera. I had also got my son a film camera for the birthday; vinyl records, film cameras, we are going proper retro on this timeline. Next thing you know we’ll be voting in people who, ok not going there, my headache this past two weeks is only getting worse. It was getting well into the afternoon now in Midtown, and after a mooch around the record shop I walked down J street, copy of Ram under my arm, and went to rest my legs at the pub formerly called ‘Streets of London’. Now called ‘Streets’, they ditched the British theme years ago, so no more London Pride on tap (they served it too cold anyway), and a huge screen showing a very loud Football game on the TV, well I say a Football game, it was mostly just adverts during the game, very loud. I don’t know about you but I often think, let’s go to the pub and sit listening to very loud adverts for car insurance. Anyway once the legs were rested it was time to walk all the way over to the Amtrak station and go home.