Greetings friends,
Well what a long strange trip it’s been. As I write this, the hair salons have just opened, the restaurants opened last week and you hear those little bits of life start coming back to our community. What is the new normal? No one knows, we haven’t done this before. One thing I know for sure, we need to do this right. Don’t blow it Modesto. Let’s take these openings, stay safe, wear a mask if you can’t distance and just be yourself. Peel yourself away from the conspiracies, bad news and surround yourself with your new talents, your skills, and your new self-confidence and decide how you are going to positively come out of this with new ideas, maybe a new mission and a new outlook. Recalibrate, rethink, relook, and consider this kind of a fresh start.
This month, we are having a virtual Graffiti Summer. Well what does that mean? It means that even without the car shows and the cruise parade, we are still the intergalactic home of American Graffiti, and the Graffiti spirit lives here all year long. You can hear the sounds of the big V8s and the squealing of the tires all over town. This is who we are. The sounds of rock and roll run in our veins, and we feel the beat of the engines and guitars wherever we are. This month, we will have a virtual cruise, take you on a trip back to the 1950s to those innocent days of burgers, fries and shakes and the car hop or two. We get to meet one of our local classic car guys, Larry Neville and we hang out at the Velvet Creamery and we will even have a lecture and discussion about the film American Graffiti that we celebrate. Now that you can leave your house, take a self-guided trip around the Historic Cruise Route and get ready to help us start building the Graffiti USA Museum. Things are happening and this is who we are, so let’s be excited that Modesto is a “Classic Essential American City”. Be proud, be Modesto Strong and let’s celebrate the good of who we are. Celebrating what makes us unique, makes us special.
My family is my strength. It is a strange time for becky and me as parents, my daughter Madison is expecting and our mission is to keep her safe and healthy and my other daughter Abbey is getting married in October, so many things that should be so normal and exciting, have a whole lot of complications. I am beyond excited to be a grandparent and know that no matter what, it will be ok, but it is different, and caution is in the air. Many of you are celebrating virtual graduations, something I’ll bet you never planned on. There is celebration, but yet some uneasiness. I’m sure that many of you might be feeling the same way, but we will be getting through this together, and for that my friends, I am very grateful and feel your strength.
Modesto Strong, that’s what we need to be right now. Our local businesses need us now more than ever. As we go out, we need to take care of these folks first and make sure our friends are ok and have our support. The local retailer, restaurant, the baker, the coffee shop, car dealer, grocer and so many others all need us. I am so grateful for the local businesses that are in this magazine, supporting our mission of spreading good news, and our mission of helping support our great local businesses. Thank you for the teamwork.
I am so happy that thanks to our company Sierra Pacific Warehouse Group and our amazing customers like Purina USA, we were able to purchase over 9000 meals from our local restaurants over the last two months from our local restaurants. We are so happy to be able to give back when the need was there and I know these local businesses are there for us when the needs are there. We appreciate all of you and thank you all for reading ModestoView. We need some good in our lives and ModestoView is proud to deliver, through good times and bad, that’s what makes us all Modesto strong.
Let’s make sure we are looking out for each other, the voiceless, and those that are not being treated equal. We are one people, and we all must work so hard to end racism, where ever we find it.
I appreciate you all,
Chris Murphy – Publisher and Founder, ModestoView
chrism@modestoview.com<mailto:chrism@modestoview.com>
