Tag: fanny ann’s saloon

old sac at christmas

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old sacramento 121623

Still in Old Sacramento last Saturday, I went and stood by the big Christmas Tree on Front Street, where people were gathering for photos, and there were different singers nearby filling the street with a range of sounds. I’m often reminded that I don’t always appreciate the qualities of street performers, this was one of those moments. It was a busy Saturday in the festive season, there were the classic cars riding around, people handing out flyers, musicians, all sorts of people out and about. Then there’s me, standing there with my sketchbook trying to draw it all, soaking it all in like one of those people that goes out and watches the world go by. I suppose I do. I leaned against a barrel, but my legs were like, mate can we go and sit down now?

old sacramento cart 121623

So I decided to go and find a pub and sit down with a beer. Then I saw this old cart and decided to stand a bit longer, and draw that. I also popped into a shop full of every possible type of novelty sock known to man. I love a novelty sock, but even I was overwhelmed. There are all types of cheesy shops down here in old Sac, and I’m all for it. These days, just having physical shops of any description with interesting things in them is a bonus. One of the reasons I decided against going to San Francisco is because the Lego store downtown has closed, and I always loved going there. I don’t want to have be driven out to some far-flung mall to visit the Lego store. It was accessible and on the way back to the Amtrak bus, so I’d always go in and look around at all the stuff I didn’t need. Now we just shop online, and I’m a big offender, it’s so easy. That said I always make a point to spend quite a bit of money in the downtown shops in Davis at Christmas time, we still have some lovely little independent shops.

old sacramento, fanny anns saloon

I headed to Fanny Ann’s Saloon. I don’t remember the last time I came in here, maybe a decade ago? I know that I last sketched inside here in December 2009, if you can believe it. It’s got a lot of old stuff to draw, yet I’ve not sketched it since. I sat at the bar and got a beer, and started to add a bit more detail to the cart sketch, before realizing that my inside up-close eyesight is getting worse (I went to the optometrist this week and have ordered some very expensive glasses to help with that). So I thought, let’s just sketch the bar anyway, and see what comes out. I was being picked up my wife to head back to Davis soon so I had a short amount of time to observe a large amount of detail, in quite a busy bar area, and I think I did alright. If I had sat further back and had another hour or so (and a couple more beers) I might have done a more detailed and colourful wider scene. The bar staff were friendly. My legs were happy to be seated for a bit, and sketching with a beer definitely helped me unwind. More than that, I am nearly done with the current sketchbook, which I had been hoping to complete by Christmas. I needed a day out drawing, I got one, and I was able to be home in good time for a curry.

the fanny ann’s monologues

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Old Town Sacramento on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Click to see bigger (move further away to see smaller)

Old Town Sacramento on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Click to see bigger (or move further away to see smaller)

Having sketched one panorama in Sacramento already that day I decided to sketch another in nearby Old Sacramento. This is the Gold Rush era town, established in 1849 according to their handy brochure. Now see the building with the red and wfanny ann's saloon, old town sachite striped awnings, that is Fanny Ann’s Saloon, I have sketched it before back on a rainy day in 2009 (click on the little square to the right to see it, and then come right back here to finish reading). It’s a really interesting place with lots of old stuff all over the walls (including for some reason old British railway station signs, among all the Old West stylings). I’ve only ever been in there in the afternoons for a quick pint post-sketching or post-shopping, I imagine it is a fun place to hang out in the evenings, I don’t know but it’s always very friendly. They have a website, http://www.fannyannsaloon.com/, but if you click on there you have to promise you’ll come right back because I’m not done). They also have arcade games upstairs. IP1040434 remember about five years ago my friend Simon came over from England and played some of the classic shoot-em-up games, which seemed appropriate given the location we were in, I don’t mean in an old town from the Cowboy era, but just America in general. There he is on the left there, you can click on that image to get an idea of the decor (and you’ll have to come back to this page after that because there’s nowhere else to go). So that is Fanny Ann’s, which reminds me of the expression “Sweet F.A.”, which my Mum used to say meant “Sweet Fanny Ann’s”, which of course means “nothing”. Or was it “Sweet Fanny Adams”? Actually it was “Sweet Fanny Adams”. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was. Ah, so I’ve been telling people for years it was, well never mind. Words change as they get across the Atlantic.

fannyfannyfanny

Me in France, 2002, giggling at a shop called “Fanny Fanny Fanny”

Take “Fanny”. I had no idea. Now for those of you who don’t know, well, go and look it up on Google (open a new tab so you can come back here though, be really careful how you phrase the search). Yeah, see? I had no idea. The expression is probably ruder in England than in America. We don’t go around saying “Fanny this” or “Fanny that” (unless it’s a name in a costume drama, it’s always a name in a costume drama) and we all giggle at the mention of the word. In America it means ‘backside’, as you all know. People wear “fanny-packs”, that which we in England call “bum-bags”, of course in America “bum” means something else, often a homeless person, or in the often used expression “to be bummed”, again an alarming and graphic choice of words to a British ear but I actually heard a newsreader here in California say it three times in as many minutes when describing some local news item, basketball or something. “Bummer” is common on both sides of the pond of course, but here I’ve even heard the President himself referred to as “A Bummer” (thanks folks, I’m here all week). But “Fanny”, I had no idea. Years ago in France, when I first met my wife (who is American) I remember gasping in shock as she told me about when she had fallen over on rollerblades once and gotten a “bruised fanny”. I wasn’t even sure how it was physically possible, and I asked if she’d landed on a bollard or something, and after some confusion she laughed and explained that she was referring to the posterior. It was my first step into a larger world, a world of transatlantic vocabulary differences and easily avoided faux-pas. I still won’t say “fanny”. That old fashioned embarrassed Britishness is just too deeply ingrained in me, stiff upper lip old chap, put that light out, there’s a war on.

So anyway next time I’m in old Sacramento, I’ll pop back into Fanny Ann’s for a pint and a bit more sketching. If you see me, do say “Cheers”, or perhaps the rather more British expression “Bottoms Up”, which of course translates over here as, well…