Chico is very hot. "I'm from the Mojave, and I think Chico is hot," said a friend who spent four years at Chico State.
As towns in the Central Valley go, Chico is among the nicer ones, although considering how ugly Stockton, Modesto, and Yuba City are, that's a low bar. Chico doesn't claim to be the X Capital of the World, where X is a sad or sexless item of produce — prunes, say, or alfalfa. Its name doesn't translate into something barfy, like Manteca ("lard"), nor does it sound as dystopian as Oildale.
Because it's a college town, it's got an artsy side, one that I suspect is run by a tiny Pink Mafia, at least a few of whom I know to be gay Republicans. There's a landmark, the Senator Theatre, built by Timothy L. Pflueger in 1928, six years after he designed the Castro Theatre. A Moorish mishmash with a gloriously unnecessary five-story tower capped by a topaz-yellow jewel, it's sadly underused as a venue.
Otherwise, Chico is pretty down-to-earth. Every time I go on a road trip on which I eat breakfast in an unfamiliar place, I try to suss out the Hungry Man or its equivalent. I'm pretty sure Jack's Family Restaurant in Chico has the hungriest Hungry Man I've ever had, a colossal plate of eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, and potatoes. (I've had Jack's chicken fried steak, too).
However unwise to eat to excess in such heat, a meal like that provides a good cushion for a trip to the Sierra Nevada brewery, America's second-largest craft brewery and the world's biggest consumer of hops, where the 90-minute Brewhouse Tour is free! Founder Ken Grossman started in the '70s when home-brewing was illegal, he's never paid for a single ad, and the contraption he built to run beer through hops (as opposed to the other way around) is unpatented and free for any would-be brewers to use.
But the best part of Chico is Bidwell Park. Although in the Central Valley, the city is close enough to the Sierra foothills that the narrow park, which originates in the center of town, connects town to country along Big Chico Creek. Established by the widow of the town's founder, it's full of deep swimming holes, lots of hiking trails, a 19th-century experimental tree farm, and a rock formation called "Monkey Face." In other words, Dolores Park isn't even its pale cousin.
The last time I was in town was for a wedding, and it also happened to be Chico Pride, which was essentially a parade-less set of booths in City Plaza and a lone, keg-filled afterparty at the Chico Women's Club. Attitude was nonexistent. Although I met a guy who did hair and who eventually unfriend me, it's always nice to walk into town as fresh meat and have people want to talk to you because everyone already knows one another. You're not going to get that in Modesto.
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