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Our sixth annual "Best of Folsom"
campaign is finally finished, and we once again had well more
than 2,000 responses to vote on the best Folsom has to offer!
We decided to mix it up a bit this year in terms of reporting
the results - with a long article about the Best Picks, and
showing the top 3 winners. After all, you may know the best
places to go to already, but it's good to know of alternates,
too! Besides, how many ways can you write "these guys brew a
good cup of coffee"? We do realize that 90% of you haven't even
made it this far in the article and are skimming the results by
now, but we won't hold that against you! For the rest of you,
we present this year's Best of Folsom!
Some new categories this year include Best Restaurant (Bidwell
Street Bistro - by wide margin), Best Health Club (CalFit), and
Favorite City Council Member (Kerri Howell), while we took off some of the less popular
categories, and retired the "Best Mortgage Broker" and "Best
Realtor". Steve Heard always wins that anyway, and he was
feeling sorry for the competition. ;-)
Old favorites still ruled in a few
categories... Best Breakfast was once again given to Gold Miner
Cafe, a Folsom institution for many years now (Fifth 'Best of
Folsom' award). Best Pizza was Chicago Fire, with well over
half the votes in a city with many pizza options available! Red
Robin once again has won Best Burger, and Trader Joe's has
dominated as grocer of choice since they moved in. Beach Hut Deli and Mr. Pickle
were neck and neck for several weeks for best sandwiches, but
Beach Hut once again prevailed.
While there are lots of
familiar faces, there is lots of new blood in the winners'
circle this year... Manderes has started their new restaurant
and bar strongly, as it has won Best New Business 2008, came in
second for Best Bar, and Brent won for Best Bartender.
Karen's Bakery (pictured) won quite strongly for Best Dessert
and placed highly in best lunch spot as well. Also notable are Goodfellas
(ranked second in Italian), Mr. Pickle (second for best
sandwiches), and Black Rooster, which ranked in both coffee bar
and sandwiches. All in all, plenty of new businesses that
deserve to be in everyone's "rotation"!
We were floored by the
diversity of picks in some categories... one of our new
categories, "Best Teacher" proved that Folsom has no shortage
of excellent teachers. Sandra Gallardo Elementary provided the
top 2 teachers getting votes - proof positive that they are
doing good things at that school. We'd love to show the list of
all the names of vote-getters, but to be honest, there were a
LOT. Suffice to say, Folsom should be proud that it has such a
great variety of teachers - they are a huge part of why Folsom
schools always rank as some of the best in the state.
Our biggest surprise was the
additional category that we didn't include! Azuar must have
emailed all of their fans, because we got a ton of write-in
votes for "Best Band", even though it wasn't on the ballot!
Hats off to Azuar... they show us that it doesn't hurt to
ask!
Here's a sample of some of our
favorite comments from our readers:
"For cheapest gas, you
should add Safeway - with the 10 cents off (or more), it's been
cheaper than Costco."
- too bad our Safeway doesn't have gasoline! Best of
Lincoln, perhaps???
"Seriously improve the
search... It sucks."
I can't disagree. It's on our list of stuff to fix... it's
too complicated to explain why it sucks, but the short answer
is - we're working on it. UPDATE: We have a new search!
Check it out.
"100,000 uniques per month?
are you smoking crack over there"
No, but we get a lot of traffic. I don't know where
we said we get 100,000 uniques a month, but email me and I'll
be happy to bore you with the details. :-)
"best place to see wild life
(deer, turkeys etc..) Prison Road in the AM"
I hope you work for the prison!
"How about None of the Above
for favorite city council member"
Ouch, baby. Very ouch.
"You
need a little more diversity. Folsom is becoming more
diversified as it continues to grow. Peeps better get used to
it."
You'll be happy to know that MyFolsom.com is an equal
opportunity employer. If you don't mind working for free, just
about anyone can write for us!!! :-)
How come you don't have best
(insert category here) listed?
We try and come up with new categories every year. Our
biggest qualifications are demand and competition. It needs to
be a category that would have a wide interest, and more
importantly, at least 5 businesses must be included. It doesn't
mean we don't consider them though. Bug us before BOF '09 and
we may add it.
"Best place to go if you can
expense it (can't do that much or at all if one is in FM1)"
I feel your pain... but for those 30 minute "working
lunches" that we all love, I recommend Goodfellas or Express
Gourmet to cater your next face-to-face. Close to Intel,
reasonable prices, great food.
"Best place to go running -
wear an orange jumpsuit and go for a jog near the prison. You
may get the best workout of your life!!!"
Or shot, take your pick...
Karen's has the best desserts in town!
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