Salinas Scene

 

Salinas, California

 

If you walk out the back door of The Beerded Bean – a place that serves coffee and craft beer in the Oldtown section of Salinas' Main Street – into the alley and look right, you'll be taking in the scene depicted in the illo above, plus or minus those cars parked there on Gabilan Street. 

The brown and gray painted building bordering the left side of the alley as you look toward the north used to house the town's Greyhound station. I think there's still bus service in and out of this city, aside from the local Monterey Salinas Transit buses, and I believe it's operated next to the train depot a couple of blocks farther up, on Market Street.

Between Gabilan and Market Streets lies Central Avenue, and if you've read John Steinbeck's East of Eden, you know that was where that author grew up. His family's house still stands there and is home to a volunteer-run lunch restaurant.

That tall grey structure peeking up above the rest is the Taylor Farms Building, built on the lot upon which the old Hotel Cominos once stood. A fashionable place to stay on the Central Coast in the 1920s and '30s, the hotel had fallen into disrepair by October of 1989, when the shocks from the Loma Prieta earthquake, epicentered in the Santa Cruz mountains northwest of here, damaged it beyond practical renovation. The new building houses the headquarters of the Taylor Farms produce operations in the upper floors and accommodates retail businesses on the ground floor. 

The city leaders have struggled with supporting the town's center, known in recent decades as "Oldtown." Thirty or forty years ago, in an attempt to foster businesses in that part of town – businesses that were suffering under the popularity of the then-new Northridge Mall, two or three miles farther north on Main Street (almost out of town at that time) – the decision came down from on-high to make traffic on the three blocks of Oldtown one-way and dress things up in garden-mall fashion. That lasted until last year, when tens of millions of dollars were spent to reinstate the two-way traffic flow and to augment the garden mall feel. It should be noted here that Northridge Mall is currently suffering from the loss of Sears and Toys 'R' Us revenues, though the smaller boutique-type businesses there come and go, and come and go.

I was born in this town, one of the first crop of '50s babies to be born in Memorial Hospital, which was almost out of town on Romie Lane... now quite definitely surrounded by town. I have lived the last 35 years as a resident of my birthtown, though I don't consider it my hometown. I was raised on a farm farther to the south, in the valley that shares this city's name. We did most of our shopping and went to schools in the small ag communities of Chualar and Gonzales. Our doctors were in Salinas, and if we wanted to see a movie or go to the annual Rodeo or have a pizza (something I only remember doing one or two times in my childhood) or go to a department store, we went to Salinas. A trip to Salinas was a once-a-month kind of thing, if even that often.

I don't claim to have the kind of relationship with this place that Steinbeck had. The city doesn't really know I exist, apart from the property taxes it collects from me. The city couldn't ignore Steinbeck, though not in a positive way, as his publication of The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden prompted some local book burnings... down on the corner of Main and San Luis Streets. The prominent families hated him then, but ever ready as people are to profit on his name since his death, one can find 'Steinbeck' attached to many businesses and schools these days. 

Don't really know where I was headed with this. I imagine that's pretty apparent to anyone who might be reading it, and I know this doesn't reach the eyes of too many folks. I don't want to disparage the rep of this town, so I should stop right here.

Peace to everyone, and if you haven't got something good to say... well... there you go.