Gavin Cans Film Commission Head Stephanie Coyote
Evan Low to Become Country's Youngest Gay Asian-American Mayor
San Francisco Society Tips: How to End a Party
NY Times Singles Out Vallejo As Battleground Between Gays & Christians
Redheads Unite!
Degenerates visiting Sonoma rejoice! River Rock Casino in Geyserville is undergoing a massive steroidal treatment -- expanding from 62,000 square feet to more than 600,000 sq. feet. Yowza.
The new facility -- er, make that "resort" -- will cost about $300 million. Which sort of implies to us that the casino is already making a pretty penny; indeed, tribal gaming continues to grow significantly every year.
Is it better losing your dough to a NorCal Tribe better than doing so in Vegas? Oh, yes, indeed. We just lost our shirt in Vegas and not only was it 107 F and dry as hell, but there wasn't much in the way of wineries. Sonoma's got all those trees and stuff too.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Tribal gaming in California is an offensive race-based monopoly.
I'm disappointed-- usually SFist hits just the right political note (I love you guys!) but here you missed a BIG and important issue. River Rock Casino is a major environmental disaster in what used to be a pristine rural valley (I know, I grew up there). Most tribal casinos have no environmental review-- which means no EIR, no impacts studies, no habitat studies, no traffic studies, no local input, etc. There is no way this monster could have been approved except via tribal powers, because it violates every local land use law. While I believe (how could I not?) that the tribes have been screwed and deserve to be lifted out of the poverty in which many have been living, there is a place for everything. This very rural and formerly very beautiful area is not the right place for a casino, much less a 60,000 square foot casino!
Well golly Native Americans ruining the environment? I think that actually meets the definition of ironic.
The tribes, bands, nations of Indians in the United States are sovereign nations within the United States. They can do with their land what they wish and are finally taking advantage of the terrible treaties they got. I don't think when the white people ended up tearing up California during the Gold Rush and then building up the place did they ever did an EIR, impact study, habitat study, traffic study, or got local input.
Why should white people be the only ones who can say how native people should use their land? It might be ashamed to build up that rural valley, but hydraulicking during the Gold Rush certainly ruined many native Californians' pristine man made habitat.
Oh and by the way -- it wasn't pristine anyways when the Spanish got here in the first place. The native Californians created a livable habitat by annual burning of most of the state.
So learn some history. Go up to the Round Valley Reservation to see how an Indian group without a
casino lives and then make judgments about what's going on.
Poverty ruins the environment as much as wealth.
Sheesh, Cranky, perhaps you did not read all of my comment before you fired off your comment. Let me clarify that I agree that poverty ruins the environment as much as wealth, and I agree that the tribes have endured grave injustice. But I also believe that as a society we should shoulder our obligation to make reparation to the tribes in a manner that does not cause major and irreversible harm to our already fragile environment.
I'm quite familiar with the history of California and with the historic poverty of the state's tribes. I am also well-versed in the continuing ecological harm caused by Gold Rush mining practices. But as my grandma used to say (and yours may have as well), two wrongs do not make a right. From a rational perspective as well as from an ethical perspective, it does not follow that because California's European invaders wreaked major environmental damage, that the tribes are entitled to add to that damage today. The environment belongs to all of us, not just to individual landowners, because we all have to live with the repercussions of bad choices.
Christa -- I can understand you upsetedness about the whole matter. No matter what, the band of Indians can do what they want with their land without the input of the local community. They are a sovereign nation.
There are not enough rights in the world to repair what the "discovery" of the Americans did to its native people and habitat. I don't see why the native peoples have to make us (non native) happy. It's our history coming back to bite us in the butt.