Woodland
Every Tuesday my friends Pamela and Ellen and I have lunch (though Ellen sometimes pops off to the east coast to see her son and some shows in NYC) and lately we have been heading to Woodland to my new favorite place, the oft-mentioned Father Paddy's. This week we got to Woodland before the pub opened and did a little wandering around.
Dev wants to know what this is; he saw it in a furniture store and found it most comfy:
Woodland is about 10 miles north of Davis, with lots of fields (and horses and goats) in between; it's the actual-ag-town that complements the ag-school-town of UC Davis. The populations are similar, both around 60,000, but the towns are markedly different. The top employers in Davis are the university (28,411 employees), the school district (972), and the city itself (492). In Woodland, the biggest employers are distribution centers -- Target (796), Walgreens (713), and Thrifty Payless (480). A lot of the transportation infrastructure built for ag has been useful for other industries, too.
As you might guess, Woodland is a lot more of a working class town than Davis, and it has a much more solid feeling to it than Davis does. There is a toy library where families can check out toys. There's a restored 1800s opera house that is a humble brick building. There is one main street of shops, and a tractor supply and repair store. Going to Father Paddy's is partly about Pat and his lovely staff, but it's also about getting the hell out of Davis and to a town that doesn't feel ready to be swept away by a self-generated wave of self-satisfaction*.
As a true Western Town, it also has horses and horse stuff, much to Dev's delight. He tried bareback riding...
...then decided maybe a saddle was a good idea after all, though this one was a touch too big.
(*I am very lucky to live in Davis, which is a lovely little city full of flowers and bike paths and clean air and a babels-worth of languages. I just yearn for a touch of working class reality now and then.)
Dev wants to know what this is; he saw it in a furniture store and found it most comfy:
Woodland is about 10 miles north of Davis, with lots of fields (and horses and goats) in between; it's the actual-ag-town that complements the ag-school-town of UC Davis. The populations are similar, both around 60,000, but the towns are markedly different. The top employers in Davis are the university (28,411 employees), the school district (972), and the city itself (492). In Woodland, the biggest employers are distribution centers -- Target (796), Walgreens (713), and Thrifty Payless (480). A lot of the transportation infrastructure built for ag has been useful for other industries, too.
As you might guess, Woodland is a lot more of a working class town than Davis, and it has a much more solid feeling to it than Davis does. There is a toy library where families can check out toys. There's a restored 1800s opera house that is a humble brick building. There is one main street of shops, and a tractor supply and repair store. Going to Father Paddy's is partly about Pat and his lovely staff, but it's also about getting the hell out of Davis and to a town that doesn't feel ready to be swept away by a self-generated wave of self-satisfaction*.
As a true Western Town, it also has horses and horse stuff, much to Dev's delight. He tried bareback riding...
He also is quite sure he needs a cool hat like this fellow.
As for this guy... we're not sure what the deal is, but we were very, very polite to him and to his eyebrows.
(*I am very lucky to live in Davis, which is a lovely little city full of flowers and bike paths and clean air and a babels-worth of languages. I just yearn for a touch of working class reality now and then.)
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