Fresno Famous

Dear Famous reader, 

Sorry for giving you another looking-back, end-of-the-year story. At least it's not a best-of list.

With that, here's  what happened (a very short version with lots of holes) in Fresno in 2010:

The blogosphere

Maybe it’s because I am in the business and paying attention, but it feels like Fresno’s online community continues to come into its own as THE hub for all sorts of city-centric information. The medium for the chatter shifted perhaps — this year it was all about FB updates and Twitter (and Tweetups) — but the conversations were vibrant and robust. This year also saw several successful online campaigns, from the FUSE Fest and 59 Days of Code, to Save the Fulton Mall, Google Fiber, and the all-out insanity that is/was Walmart’s Feeding the Hungry program.

With a keen eye on the scene, Paprika Studios capitalized on this traction and put together the Frebby Awards, a celebration of the best Fresno’s Internets had to offer.

Governance

Twenty-ten was the year people decided to give a shit about how they’re governed — or at least put up a good act. On a national level that manifested itself in things like the tea-party (bleh) and the Rally to Restore Sanity and larger-than normal turnouts for the mid-term elections. Locally, us citizens stepped up to show an interest in a whole host of issues, like the Fulton Mall (what to do? what to do?) and downtown revitalization, conditional use permits (snitchers by snitching) and new developments (Fulton 55 and El Paseo).

The chains go down

The stranglehold might not be broken, but Fresno's love of chain restaurants seemed to loosen some at least. While we gained places like SupportR, Frosted Cakery, Meze House, an expanded Charlotte's Bakery and revamped Cafe Corazon (not to mention Dusty Buns Bistro) we lost an Applebees, Red Robin and Claim Jumper. 

Radio, radio

We've come to expect changes on the radio dial. It's part of the business and no real news. But this year there were some biggies. In April KYNO moved channels and jumped to 50,000 watts, putting it in direction competition with KMJ by focusing on local talk during the midday (Alan Autry and the Bee's Bill McEwen). Autry's last show was last week. 

The other big change came to long-time rock giant KRZR, which was sent off to High Definition radio (103.7 HD-2, whatever that is) and replace by ... we don't know what. But it plays my generation's old school.