God Bless the Fig Garden

In Fresno it's hard not to come to appreciate the existence of places like the Fig Garden Village, or also the Shops at River Place.

Both those places are like enclaves of niceness---civilization, if you will---amidst Fresno that allows you to feel like you are somewhere in "nice"  California, e.g. with a sheen of prosperity behind the bedges and palms, enough to fake it while driving by.

The Starbucks in both placed do not have homeless people in wheelchairs manning the doors, as they do down on Olive Street. They have nice black asphalt parking lots that are like mazes to navigate, in between an opulence of trees. The Fig Garden Village has a Whole Foods---it's beautiful with all its pumpkins now. It's the nicest place you hit, coming north out of downtown on Palm. It feels like an oasis.

River Place is nicer still. It is on the north edge of Fresno proper, along the main highway before it descends into the San Joaquin Plain. Here one finds the big box retailers, including the remains of a bankrupt national bookstore chain, the name of which still adorns the tower along the edge of the great parking lot. But it still has plenty of life---a huge new multiplex movie theater,  a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, and the last REI before you hit Yosemite. Always something to keep in mind.

To live in Fresno is to constantly make the trade-off between the old down-and-out but potentially up-and-coming hip (like the Tower District and Downtown), and the oasis of rampant full-on surburbia. It's difficult to exist in either of those places for too long on their own. One needs to keep cycling about the neighborhoods to stay somewhat in balance.