This year is whizzing by like a plane on the runway for takeoff. It seems like it is harder everyday to make time for all the things there are to do here in Modesto. Additionally, March is a special month if you are a Murphy and love to celebrate being Irish. Which brings me to the luck of the Irish. We are lucky to live in a town where so many people give back to our communities and volunteer their time to make Modesto a better place. Some do it as their job and some do it for the love of making our community better and it is this team effort that makes Modesto special. That is why I started ModestoView so many years ago as it is the way that I, my family and my company Sierra Pacific Warehouse Group want to focus on giving back and highlight the good in our community. It is so easy to criticize and showcase the bad and that is the message that our major media outlets send out. That is why ModestoView exists to show the good and change public opinion about ModestoView.
The best thing about ModestoView is the ViewCrew. This month we celebrate them and feature them on the cover. ModestoView is special as it is not written by professional writers. Some are, but the words you read here in this magazine are written by people that care about their community, their friends, their crafts and their art. This is a wonderful group. They are the doers and the thinkers. They are the creators of art, makers of music, designers of urban spaces, the believers in healthy minds and bodies and those that love to explore the daytime, the night times and all of those spaces in between. I am so very grateful for their contributions to our city and to the pages of ModestoView. Thanks to our ViewCrew we celebrate Rockabilly, sing the blues, make music, paint murals, promote live music 7 nights a week, have art walks, cook tasty food, create parklets, save buildings, direct local theatre performances and so much more.
ModestoView is about doing, creating, promoting and celebrating and we really hope you like it and that it makes your day better when you read it or see our posts on Facebook or get our Tweets via Twitter or see one of the 5000 pictures that are tagged #modestoview on Instagram. Hopefully there is something in every issue that will make you smile, tell a friend or relative something good about Modesto.
When you look through this issue, think about our advertisers when you are shopping local, going to the movies, going out to dinner, finding music or seeking new services. These are the local businesses that really care about Modesto and the more we shop local, the better our city is. They not only TALK local, they ACT local. They make it possible for us to print and deliver this to you.
I consider myself so lucky you are reading this and thank you for any new ideas and positive direction you can recommend for our community. We all need to work together and we make ModestoView for you, so we hope you like it and hope you feel a bit of the luck of the Irish rub off on you this month.
Thanks for being Modesto friends
Chris Murphy Publisher & Founder – ModestoView chrism@modestoview.com
