Bernie Sanders Really Did Visit UC Davis

Bernie Sanders at a recent UC Davis Picnic Day; he's in front of Briggs Hall, home of the Department of Entomology and Nematology. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey, photoshopped by Brooke Fox, executive director, Vacaville Downtown Business Improvement District.)

He's back--not as a presidential candidate but as a meme.

A meme? It all started when photographer Brendan Smialowski for Getty Images photographed him at President Joe Biden's inauguration. As dignitaries in designer coats strolled by in the bitter cold (temperature stood at 22° and wasn't moving), there he was,  all bundled up in a warm coat and mittens, sitting in a folding chair with his arms crossed, wearing a mask, and social-distancing from the crowd (pandemic precautions, you know). 

Fact is, it's c-o-l-d in Vermont winters, and Sanders, who will be 80 on Sept. 8, knows that quite well. Cheers to him!

Enter Software engineer Nick Sawhney of New York. He created a tool that allows folks to insert the senator into any street address in Google Maps street view. Just click on https://bernie-sits.herokuapp.com/, insert a location, and you're good to go--that is, good for Sanders to go anywhere you want him to go. That could be Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Dublln, Duluth,  Des Plaines, Dearborn Heights...and...ahem...Davis.  (See some of the memes on this Washington Post article.)

In an interview with CBS, Sanders seemed amused by all the attention.

“In Vermont, we dress, we know something about the cold,” he told Gayle King. “And we're not so concerned about good fashion. We just want to keep warm. And that's what I did today."

Perhaps best of all, he agreed to a sweatshirt bearing the meme, and is donating the funds to Meals on Wheels.