onthemoney's blog

Having grown up in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, I always think I’m used to the summer heat.

Granted I work in an air-conditioned office, drive an air-conditioned car and live in an air-conditioned home, but it’s the valley. There’s really no escaping the heat. Take out the garbage, mow the grass, clean the pool or move from one air-conditioned place to another and you’ll get an unhealthy dose of valley heat. But thinking that prepares you for those triple-digit-plus temps is very misguided.

On my Santa Cruz vacation, I visited my favorite retail spot. It’s called Big Kahuna Hawaiian Shirts in Capitola (there’s a theme here). It’s just a couple of blocks from the beach and has more than 1,000 shirts in stock. I can spend a lot of time in there checking out all the wild-and-crazy designs.

When I was there recently, I had the quintessential laid-back beach experience. As a walked in the door, the twentysomething cashier said to me: “Hey, dude!” OK, I don’t get called that much any more, if ever. No matter how indigenous I try to look, I’m clearly too old and too uptight to be in the dude crew. But, hey, I appreciated the compliment.

Even when I’m on vacation I am always checking out the business climate where I’m supposed to be relaxing. It’s just a habit I guess. On a recent trip to Santa Cruz, I was curious how this laid-back beach region was doing amid this stifling recession.

I was surprised to see that housing prices from Santa Cruz to Monterey really hadn’t come down much. While there do seem to be some short-sales and bank-owned properties on the market, if you’re not willing to drop $700,000 to live in one of the beach communities, not necessarily on the beach, or $500,000 in some of the farther-out enclaves up in the redwoods, you’re out of luck.

Modesto Steam Laundry, a Modesto business that’s more than 100 years old, will be gone by the end of the month because the descendants of the longtime owners had a falling out.

I know McHenry Avenue is a state highway, but does the city of Modesto’s main retail artery really need to be in such bad shape?

Most of the major intersections are so rutted or badly patched that drivers get their teeth rattled mercilessly traveling along or across McHenry and their cars take a beating.

Fred Franzia, the president of Bronco Winery, was the subject of a feature story in The New Yorker magazine. The story took some pretty nasty shots at Franzia, his low-cost wines and the Northern San Joaquin Valley.

You know the drill, people come out here from San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and other centers of the universe so they can write about a subject that’s set against the backdrop of this – to use their words – dark, dank, dusty, meth-infested, cow town. Don’t believe me? Well, just rewind to some of the out-of-town coverage of the Peterson and Levy cases. I know I sound like a shameless homer, but I get tired of such superficial rants. It sells us all short.

Valley Sporting Goods recently sent letters to its longtime, loyal customers about some changes it’s making. Valley wanted them to know that despite those changes, it plans to be around for a long time.

The letter acknowledges that these are tough times in retail, which is what prompted the changes, but the business didn’t want people to think they were signs Valley was going out of business. In fact, the letter says, the changes are designed to have the opposite effect – keep it in business.