Here is a lesson from Sacramento: if you take your downtown area, and ramp down all the sidewalks at the curbs so everything is ADA compliant, and block off car traffic so the light rail can run, and zone to encourage mixed high density commercial and residential development, and put some rent control in place so real people can afford to live downtown, and institute a social safety net for the forgotten ones, then you are going to end up with a street full of poor people in wheel chairs on your average Sunday afternoon.
Another observation: pot is legal in California. I don’t know who used to advertise in the free paper, but now the Sactown rag is about 80% marijuana services ads.
While I’m on a roll: rich muslim men definitely tip street musicians. And there is sound reasoning behind the arranged, dowried marriage: if you raise your daughters to be pampered, spoiled, insistent, demanding brats, you’re gonna have to pay someone to take her off your hands.
OK, how ’bout an observation sparked by Old Sacramento: Hot Springs needs a good hat shop, a magic and novelty shop, and a couple sexy costume or lingerie shops. And some food stand type restaurants with common seating. You can sell nostalgia all day and all night, but give’em something to take home besides a damn t-shirt or hokey Arky gag.
A Sacramento (French) / Hot Springs (Documentary) film fest contrast: You can run a film festival focused on a depressing or confusing genre that not many choose to watch on their own, but if you give your audience free passes for busking outside, provide sodas and popcorn for the kids, and then they win the raffle prize at the beginning of the movie, (though they end up giving the gift certificates to the one guy who bought a CD), you will end up with some very satisfied audience members, even if they have to walk out during the short film because some guy falls on an antler and dies.
Finally; if you stay up late for days because you’re busy in San Francisco, then plan a 12 hour busking stop in Sacramento, which ends on a midnight train to Oregon, you are going to be very very tired when you get there.