In eighteen years in this here town, I don’t think my family has ever missed the Open House Christmas thing on First Street, yet we’ve never attended the tree lighting ceremony that starts the evening. I attribute this to the fact that we live just a few blocks from “Adobe” whose Christmas lights pretty much outdo the Las Vegas strip for visual intensity (really, they do), so it never occurs to us to go watch a single tree get lit. But the shindig that follows, in which cars are blocked from First Street and Benicians lay claim to their downtown, [...]

It was the orange-red door with all the visible brush strokes that got me.  It completely transformed a mundane door into something arresting and vivid.  This type of door (a standard issue four-panel "colonist" to those of you in the know) is so common in today's built environment that it's usually completely inert, a non-entity really, yet here it had been transformed into something remarkable simply with paint.  No big bucks needed, just enough talent to make the paint seem vibrant.  This colorful gesture was just part of the zeitgeist of the Arsenal, the abandoned industrial section of our town [...]

Ever notice the easy way that architectural styles co-mingle in Benicia? It’s fairly unique, even among older cities, to have as much diversity as we do. Take a look around at the different house combinations in the older parts of town. A couple of folk Victorians may share a block with a Spanish style cottage, a World War II era duplex, and a Craftsman bungalow. On a corner may be a little house that started its life as someone’s fishing cabin. Sometimes you’ll find a barn tucked in somewhere. (Of all the clues that show us that lifestyles have evolved [...]