June 2018 — I grew up in Sacramento, California in the 1990’s. It is a large town and the states capital. It is a very nice city and even though i grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood there was very little crime. There are many parks and good school districts. It is close to San Francisco and the Six Flags theme park in Vallejo. There are many surrounding cities that were growing at the time like Roseville, El Dorodo, and Folsom. I have many special memories growing up in Sacramento playing on competitive basketball and soccer teams. I made some of my best friends there and had my first kiss. When I moved back to Sacramento after college the crime rate had gone up and many families had begun to move north. There is a very good job market in Sacramento and a lot of business opportunities. The Sacramento Kings NBA basketball team resides there and they have recently built a new arena which is very nice downtown. There is a community college named American River and a state university as well. The American River runs through Sacramento which makes fishing and river rafting popular activities. There are many bars and clubs downtown and the nightlife is always a good time. Sacramento has a minor league baseball team called the River Cats and although I am not a huge fan of the sport the games are very fun to go to. There is also a minor league soccer team called the Sacramento Republic. There are two large water parks in the area which are both refreshing during summer time. There is a large international airport which makes it very easy to reach vacation destinations. Politics are an important part of Sacramento’s culture and there are often large rallies over relevant issues. Sacramento is a good place to raise a family. The community has good values and a lot of activities. Working out is a popular pass time and there are many nice gyms and sports complexes around the town. I enjoyed growing up in Sacramento and I would recommend it to anyone looking to build a home.
May 2018 — I currently live in Sacramento, California. Sacramento is a city of contrasts and in-betweens: it is neither a big city nor a small town, nor the middle of nowhere. It is artsy, but without any well-known museums or galleries, there are many foodies here but no famous restaurants. Most people live outside of the downtown area in very suburban areas. Immediately outside the city center there are older suburbs with houses from the 1950s or 1970s where people can still sometimes walk to a café or bar, but farther outside there are huge suburbs that are long avenues and strip mall after strip mall. People tend to live far from the strip malls and with the lack of sidewalks most drive to do their most simple tasks. The best place in Sacramento is the downtown but there are few affordable places to live left there as many Bay Area transplants who were out-priced from their homes begin to move up north. One of the benefits often lauded of Sacramento is that in an hour you can get to the beach and an hour in the other direction you can get to the mountains, but there is something rather depressing that one of the biggest perks of your city is how easy it is to leave it.
May 2018 — I moved to Sacramento a few years ago. It wasn’t long after I moved here that I realized that this city is nothing like the city I grew up in. People here are generally rude, inconsiderate, and unfriendly. Law enforcement seems to spend more time harassing the homeless than they do anything else (supposedly to maintain a certain image of the city to tourists), which causes the crime rate to stay exceptionally high. And, according to articles published in local newspapers, statistically, Sacramento ranks at number one in the country for having the worst drivers. Considering how frustrated I get anytime I am on the road, combined with the number of traffic accidents I read about almost everyday, this comes as no surprise. Traffic is always a nightmare no matter what time of day or what day of the week it happens to be. The weather is either one extreme or another. It is rare for the weather on any given day to be “comfortable”, as temperatures in the summer time can reach over 110 degrees, and nights in the winter time can be as cold as 30 degrees or even lower. When I first moved to this city, I did so because rent prices were significantly lower than any other city I had lived in in this state, but over the past couple of years, rent has increased by around 10%, which eliminates the only positive trait this city had. To sum it all up, Sacramento is a dangerous city that tries desperately to make itself look like anything but that. And with rent increasing faster here than almost anywhere else in the state, there is really no benefit to living here unless you enjoy being miserable.
May 2018 — Being the capital of California, Sacramento is the heart of California’s functioning government. The downtown and midtown has busy nightlife, but drive 20 min out, and you are greeted by beautiful countrysides of Northern California. What I like about Sacramento is the diversity in the city. Country bars and punk rock bars are next to each other and every place is a new experience. They are rebuilding where all of the abandoned/condemned building were so modern-esque buildings are appearing monthly. A few things I do not like about the city is the homeless situation. Lots of transients find there way here because it’s the last major city until Portland and Reno. There is also a housing problem, even though we have so many open spaces around the city, no new building are being built to expand the housing market. I love the city and also go to University here, and I have never had a terrible moment.