Best of Sacramento

It came from Sacramento

Illustration by Terry Allen

Scene three …

We open with our mad scientist in his light-ray lab, attempting to adjust crystals to deflect the rays from the intense Sacramento sun. Dr. Davis fits the crazy-scientist image—evil, mad, deluded—but he also has the slightly disheveled look of the new urban creative found in Midtown, and he wears the hairstyle and glasses commonly found among that group.

We see his more natural side as the mad doctor is bent over a Bunsen burner trying to combine locally grown rice and tomatoes with a final ingredient (basil perhaps?). We discover it is not something new in genetics—he’s making a homegrown vegetarian soup for lunch.

But then he’s back to work using his abilities that go beyond the normal human brain. Dr. Davis is attempting to create the ultimate: a human with pure reason and logic. The doctor has a desire to manipulate the gene pool and send this smart yet compassionate superhuman into the future to spread his sperm and spawn, thereby creating an intelligent and caring world!

Unfortunately, in scene four we find that the doctor has failed and has created a Frankenstein-like monster: a muscle-bound cyborg with a square head, unable to communicate in an understandable language. The doctor names it Arnold.

He regroups and moves on to his flying X-ray machine, which closely scans the Sacramento Valley. He is looking deep into the unknown and maintaining his positive bent, using his machine to uncover and find all that is fun, good and valuable down below. There is hope for mankind!

We’ve enlisted the versatile and amazingly powerful Dr. Davis to help us with our most difficult quest: the Best of Sacramento issue. With his obsession toward creativity and his extraordinary powers of observation, we demanded that he help us find all the great people and places in Sacramento. We also wanted to use his time-travel machine to go back in history and find all the wonderful things that really were spawned here. And, in his honor, we’ll call the project “It came from Sacramento.” Together we’ve created an issue that celebrates what was born here, from sexy starlets to square tomatoes.

Beyond his help, we enlisted responses from hundreds of people in our readers’ ballot. The readers got to contribute to this beast of an issue by voting on their favorite things. And our home-grown creatives in the editorial department got to experiment and investigate all the possiblities, too, before writing down their choices.

With all that help, we just can’t keep quiet about the interesting and entertaining things—whether monstrous or wonderful—that were cooked up in the laboratory that we know as Sacramento. Best of Sacramento It came from Sacramento

Feature
It really did come from Sacramento

Goods & Services
Writers’ choice
If we don’t like it, nobody will
Readers’ choice

Arts & Entertainment
Writers’ choice
It was filmed in Sacramento
Lost in Mulletville
Readers’ choice

Food & Drink
Writers’ choice
Frankenfood: a global food revolution with local roots
Readers’ choice

Sports & Recreation
Writers’ choice
Our home-grown, star-studded athletes
Readers’ choice

People & Places
Writers’ choice
Five good reasons that Sacramento should be the conservative movement’s Mecca
Readers’ choice

Sex & Love
Writers’ choice
Barbi Benton: Sacramento’s own 1970’s starlet
Readers’ choice