Dim Sum, Oscars, and the Ingress Channel 10 Tower Portal in Sacramento

For all you of faction agents of Ingress out there, I can’t imagine there is a single one of you who watched The Oscars last night and did not notice the strong resemblance between the tall twirly things on the Dolby stage and resonators. Well, between that and all of the grumbling (OK, maybe that was just coming from my side of the sofa) about why they changed the name from the Academy Awards, which sounds so much more prestigious, to fit our stupid slang today; it’s beyond me. There was a strong similarity but not enough for copyright infringement with Google, I imagine.

Level 8 Resonator

Or, perhaps it was due to the lingering remains bouncing around in my head of our early morning jaunt after dim sum at New Canton. Gotta mention that it’s really difficult to nab a hot sesame ball after dim sum at that location because there doesn’t seem to be a big demand or by the time they get to us the sesame balls are cold. Instead, we walked over to that joint on the corner of 27th and Broadway, Dim Sum House, and I heard my husband say, One sesame ball, please. I was about to interject: Oh, let’s make it four, when I spotted the ginormous sesame ball. Size of a baseball.

I was still munching on that sesame ball by the time we arrived at Channel 10 studios at the other end of Broadway by 5th Street. You see, every time I come back to Sacramento from listing homes in West Sacramento or in Davis, I drive by the Channel 10 Tower which, believe it or not, is a portal in Ingress. The problem is you can’t get to it. My husband pulled up alongside Broadway in our incognito Prius, and I ran up the steps. I got to the very end of the breezeway entrance on the side, but still could not reach the Channel 10 Tower.

You don’t get very far on private property like this before a security guard pops up, and sure enough, I had my very own security guard questioning me. I suppose I looked a bit disshelved, in my Nitty Gritty Dirt Band t-shirt, boyfriend jeans, Chanel sandals and wild crazy hair flying in the breezeway as I tried to explain what I was doing there while pointing my cellphone as though perhaps I had hoped to connect with aliens. I tried to look as normal as I could under the circumstances: It’s a game that is played all over the world on cellphones in real time at real locations, and Channel 10 is one of them.

The portal for the Channel 10 Tower is technically not supposed to be a portal because a) it is private property (not art) and b) it is located on private property, and c) it is inaccessible to the public. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop us from blowing it up, but we weren’t close enough to deploy any resonators. The guard hollered at me: Are you the creator of this game?

On the way home, we discussed possible ways to get into Channel 10. We could go there to interview somebody. Nah. I suggested we dress as repairmen, maybe to repair the A/C. My husband launched into how he would address the attendant at the visitor booth. We have Zee App, he explained with a French accent, which is the portal photo of the Channel 10 Tower in Ingress that I showed the guard earlier as proof of my purpose. We are official because we have Zee App. See? We are here to fix that App. Yeah, I don’t think we’re getting into Channel 10. Now, maybe if I request a tour or say I want to shoot a photograph of the Channel 10 Tower? Repairmen, that’s still a possibility.