Letters for June 27, 2013

Boo NIMBYs, yes McKinley Village

Re: “Is McKinley Village smart urban infill housing—or a traffic nightmare?” by Nick Miller (SN&R News, June 20):

The issues are not increased traffic or flood risks. The issue is NIMBY: not in my backyard. The snobs in East Sacramento want to pull up the drawbridge, satisfied that they got theirs, and no one else can have it. Introducing the increased-risk-of-flooding argument is amusing at best and asinine at its worst. Sacramento, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is the No. 1 at-risk area in the country. Another hole in the levee is hardly going to increase [the chances] of the East Sac high siders getting their precious feet wet. Build it!

J. Shawn Ortiz

Sacramento

Record store was an oasis

Re “Ghosts of record-shopping past” by Rachel Leibrock (Editor’s Note, June 20):

Shortly after gaining admission to University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law, I took a road trip to see Sacramento for myself to try to surmise whether I’d feel comfortable there for three years. All day, I listened in the car to my Creedence Clearwater Revival cassette tapes. The dark, humid summer Delta day and the Oak Park campus scared me a little, but I concluded that the whole matter might work out OK when I discovered the flagship Tower Records store nearby. During my law-school years, I relied upon cultural oases like Tower, Dimple Records and The Beat for replenishment and solace. I thought they were all rather great, and I regularly immersed myself in each of them. My love of music was one of my secret weapons for surviving the real law-school experience.

Now, Tower Records and The Beat are gone. Long live Dimple and everything else that’s left of the mortar-and-concrete music retailers in town. I know of online ordering and downloading, but I just don’t see how the continual loss of record stores and bookstores portends anything good for our society and culture.

Ivan Smason

via email

Don’t demonize smokers

Re “Should Sacramento ban outdoor smoking at bars?” by Nick Miller (SN&R Midtown&Down, June 20):

First of all, I think it’s terrible that you demonize smoking. Just because you don’t smoke doesn’t mean that the rest of the world, or the rest of the people out in public, shouldn’t have the right to do so. If you sit down next to somebody who [is] a smoker, you can ask them politely to move. …

My wife is not a smoker, I am; that doesn’t make me someone that is bad or should lose his freedom … because you have a problem with someone who does smoke. I don’t drink; should I demand that the people next to me not drink when I’m out in public because I don’t like the smell or it looks gross to me? Drinking has caused many more problems than smoking ever has. We don’t see people demonize drinking, we don’t see people saying that drinking is something that needs to be banned. But all we want to just focus on [are] the dirty smokers.

Being a nonsmoker’s almost a fad these days, so people can feel good about themselves. Sure, there are health problems that arise from smoking. Sure, smoking is not the best for you. But it’s a person’s choice. Your choice not to smoke it is your choice. Everybody has the right to an opinion, but when you make it about how gross somebody is because of the way they choose to live their lives, that makes your reporting irresponsible. Shame on you.

Brian Moist

via email

Correction

In “Ghosts of record-shopping past” by Rachel Leibrock (SN&R Editor’s Note, June 20), we reported that Esoteric Records had closed. Although the store’s 15th Street location closed in 2004, its shop at 1139 Fulton Avenue is still, thankfully, alive and kicking.