By Scott Thomas Anderson

Sometimes my fellow Gen X-ers lament Sacramento losing the uniquely eccentric vibe that defined it in the 1990s and early 2000s, back when its NBA team was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and its home-grown bands like Cake, Oleander and Deaf Tones were storming radio waves across the nation. It was an era marked by an unspoken pride in the city’s run-down, shabby kind of grandeur. And it was a time when the most-lively venues were shopworn, musk-tinged and unapologetically janky.

In the last decade, we’ve seen developers and their allied taste-makers desperately try to class-up the place, attempting to will its aesthetic in line with those trendier and hopelessly unaffordable California cities that lie to the west and south. After all, if soulless investors, trust fund kids and nepo babies can’t shake a few more dimes out of the state’s capital by driving its inhabitants over a livability cliff, then what good is Sacramento anyhow?

And sure enough, much of the half-forgotten, kitsch weirdness of the place has gone the way of the wind. But while Gen-Xers like to bitch about the loss, a handful of millennials and Gen-Zers are doing something about it.

At least, that’s my sense when I’m in a bar like Tack Room. Nestled in an old building off J and 17th, this freestyling fusion of a neo-Gilded Age saloon and hidden speakeasy near Churchill Downs provides the ultimate late-day hideaway. You can walk in, order an old-school Bee’s Knees and glance at grainy video-loops of Kentucky Derby races from 1993 near the carved horse head over its bar. There’s a Devil-may-care audacity to the cocktail menu, too. The drink I first loved there was The Washed Out Rider, a mix of Mount Rum Blend, dry curacao, coconut, lime and honey. That’s off the menu now, but other gems have replaced it. Some of the bartenders can be talked into making the Hotel Nacional, a sinister little tweak on the classic daiquiri that’s spiced up with apricot brandy and pineapple juice. Never hurts to ask.

One night, a man in Tack Room was bugging me to sample his order. He was camped on the next barstool, and had been seemingly for the entire day – maybe another “washed out rider” who never rode – and he was urging me to try his mix of gin, apple brandy, peach, mint and lemon. And by that, I mean he was insisting that I take a swig off his actual glass. When I betrayed a little hesitation, he rocked on his stool and bellowed, “Ah shit, I don’t have cooties!”

I glanced at the young lady to my side, who looked at him, looked at me, raised her eyebrows and then looked down at her drink. Now this was the kind of moment I remember having back when things were about Sacramento’s glorious low-rent levity.

And I’ve had similar moments in the city’s darkest cavern of charm, Frank. This is thee spot to shelter from a scorching afternoon. It mixes the best Hurricanes in Midtown, but it’s the out-of-time shadowiness of its contours that make Frank so inviting. The room feels slightly spectral, too, the green Art Deco lamps and long emerald lights casting a shamrock flush against its vintage wall stylings. It’s not uncommon to see servers from nearby restaurants dropping by for a quick shot before their shift.

Last Labor Day, I introduced a bartender from Auburn to Frank – someone who’d heard about the place but never been. With all the props this refuge in the Ice Blocks gets for its drinks – the Piña Brava, the Tajuana Lady –my date wanted to see what her fellow professionals would do with some mezcal. Yet, as we settled down by a fuchsia glow from the fish tank, we realized that everyone else in the bar was literally dressed like pirates. I didn’t want to ask – I just wanted breathe in another night of the city’s deadpan funkiness.   

Too many other examples come to mind to mention: Locals showing up in-character for classic movie night at The Tower; Cora Coffee’s mash-up of business-class décor with bop jazz on the speakers and worn VHS tapes blinking cat videos just over the espresso machine. There are still aspects of Sacramento that you won’t find anywhere else.

“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles,” Orwell wrote in 1984. And if there’s a chance of Sacramento fending off the worst forces of elitist homogeny, it must lie in those hipster bohemian hold-outs who continue to stay the course.  

Scott Thomas Anderson is also the writer and producer of the documentary podcast series, ‘Drinkers with Writing Problems.’