Best of Arts & Smarts

Stephanie Rector moved from Los Angeles to the Sacramento area and noticed a trend: People were nuts about pirates, comic books and even her favorite television show, Star Trek.

“I wanted to keep a record of all these things I found,” she recalled, “so I got the idea of doing a website that would kind of [give] all these different groups … a one-stop place to find each other.”

And so, the idea of Sac Geeks Community Calendar was planted in 2002­—although, at the time, it merely comprised a list of links. Its growth and the inclusion of networking and calendar tools came when the revamped site was launched in 2008.

Today, the Sac Geeks website—based on the Meetup (www.meetup.com) platform—is currently home to a community of nearly 1,200 users. Approximately 100 of these users regularly organize and post events to the website’s public calendar, but anyone can join the open community. There’s also a discussion area, links and a photo gallery.

The group has also put on a small convention, organized a sci-fi book club, started a board-game group and, most recently, created the Best of Geeky Sacramento Playing Cards.

The cards—which are available at www.sacgeekscards.com—are equal parts business cards, coupons and actual playing cards. All 54 cards in the deck feature a geek-related business, group or individual, and geeks and nongeeks alike can collect them all at various card-carrying businesses.

“A change of culture has made it more popular to be a geek. The big action blockbusters are [all] comic-book movies,” said Rector.

“Most of the popular shows [nowadays] are about zombies and sci-fi and make-believe. Obviously, it’s cool to be a geek, or those would not be popular.” www.sacgeeks.com.