Palo Alto
Vol. XL, Number 11 Q December 14, 2018
Rail redesign sparks new ideas for downtown Page 5
w w w. P a l o A l t o O n l i n e.c o m
Donate to the HOLIDAY FUND page 10
Spectrum 14 Eating Out 24 Movies 26 Puzzles 38 Q Arts Los Altos Stage Company goes ‘Into the Woods’ Page 23 Q Home Transforming a Midtown rental into a family home Page 27 Q Sports M-A plays for a state football title Page 36
VOICES OF THE COMMUNITY
NEW STANFORD HOSPITAL DIGITAL MOSAIC
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For times & to learn more:
voices.stanford.edu
Page 2 • December 14, 2018 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 3
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Upfront
Local news, information and analysis
Council leans toward blocking hotel conversion Council looks to add restriction on converting downtown residences to commercial use by Gennady Sheyner aced with public outcry about insufficient transparency and misplaced priorities, Palo Alto officials backed away Monday from passing a zone change that would have helped the new owner of President Hotel convert the 75-apartment building at 488
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University Ave. into a boutique hotel. Instead, the City Council decided to leave in place — at least for the moment — a law that city planning staff believes was added to the Municipal Code by mistake in January 2016 as part of a broader cleanup of
the zoning code. The law requires that “grandfathered” buildings (those not complying with current zoning rules) undergoing remodeling retain their existing use. As such, it presents an obstacle to the planned conversion of the President Hotel in downtown Palo Alto. The council agreed that the mistake should be corrected and directed its Planning and Transportation Commission to evaluate an ordinance that would eliminate
the “same use” clause in the “grandfathered facilities” section of city code. However, council members also signaled that they would favor an ordinance that explicitly prohibits the conversion of buildings from residential to commercial use — a decision that may block the hotel’s conversion but that will almost certainly invite a legal challenge from the developer, Adventurous Journeys Capital Ventures.
For council members, the Monday hearing presented a highly unusual dilemma: They were asked to fix an error that, despite its dubious origin, is standing in the way of an unpopular project. Planning staff made the case for deleting the provision, which City Manager James Keene compared to a surgeon leaving a sponge inside a patient. (continued on page 8)
TRANSPORTATION
Rail redesign sparks ideas for downtown City staff proposes coordinating plans for Palo Alto Avenue crossing, University Avenue by Gennady Sheyner s Palo Alto gets closer to picking its preferred designs for separating the railroad tracks from streets at four intersections, city officials and community members are also rethinking key segments of major roadways, including University Avenue and Embarcadero Road. The city’s major “grade separation” project, which was sparked by Caltrain’s impending electrification of its corridor and increased train service, is heading toward a key decision point, with the City Council scheduled to take action on potential design options this Monday, its final meeting of the year. Though the council had originally hoped to finalize its gradeseparation designs by the end of the year — a goal it won’t meet — the city has succeeded in winnowing down options from the initial pool of 34 to about seven. Largely excluded from consideration are numerous options that would require the seizures of private property through eminent domain. The council’s Rail Committee has also scrapped the idea of digging trenches or building elevated viaducts at its two northern Palo Alto crossings — Palo Alto Avenue and Churchill Avenue — though both of these ambitious options are still in play for the southern crossings: Charleston Road and East Meadow Drive.
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HOLIDAY FUND
Making music a priority
Music in the Schools is instrumental in bringing free music classes to Ravenswood by Karla Kane n a drizzly December afternoon, more than 25 children gathered in the cafeteria/gymnasium at Los Robles Magnet Academy in East Palo Alto. With rapt attention they shook their arms, clapped their hands and stretched their necks and shoulders to the everaccelerating tempo of the Gha-
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naian call-and-response song “Che Che Kule.” Moving to the African rhythms was a warm up for their weekly international folk dance class, a new, free, afterschool program offered by Music in the Schools Foundation. “Would everyone find a partner? We’re going to make a giant circle,” instructor Michel
Hardbarger, who leads the class with a gentle, calming presence, said to her group of elementary school children. To the sounds of Israeli music, the dancers took turns spinning with their partners, mimicking a dreidel, in honor of Hanukkah. When the classes first started, Hardbarger recalled with a laugh, the kids were reluctant to partner up and hold hands. “I tell them, ‘You don’t have to bring them home with you. It’s just a dance!’” As the hour-long class went on, the choreography increased in complexity, with the children dutifully mouthing the directions along with Hardbarger as they
worked on step sequences, pivots and more. “They’re not just learning dance but also about other cultures and each other,” Program Director Kyle Sofman said of the successful pilot program, which keeps gaining members through word of mouth. Though international folk dance is a new offering this year, along with a percussion class for eighth-graders who might otherwise have been left out of their school’s music curriculum, Music in the Schools has been providing free general and (continued on page 12)
Veronica Weber
Folk-dance teacher Michel Hardbarger, center, teaches Los Robles Magnet Academy students the steps to a line dance, performed to Israeli folk-dance song “Hineh Ma Tov.” Hardbarger works for the nonprofit Music in the Schools Foundation, which this year received a grant from the Weekly Holiday Fund.
(continued on page 11)
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 5
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Upfront 450 Cambridge Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94306 (650) 326-8210 PUBLISHER William S. Johnson (223-6505) EDITORIAL Editor Jocelyn Dong (223-6514) Associate Editor Linda Taaffe (223-6511) Sports Editor Rick Eymer (223-6516) Arts & Entertainment Editor Karla Kane (223-6517) Home & Real Estate Editor Elizabeth Lorenz (223-6534) Assistant Sports Editor Glenn Reeves (223-6521) Express & Digital Editor Jamey Padojino (223-6524) Staff Writers Sue Dremann (223-6518), Elena Kadvany (223-6519), Gennady Sheyner (223-6513) Staff Photographer/Videographer Veronica Weber (223-6520) Editorial Assistant/Intern Coordinator Christine Lee (223-6526) Editorial Intern Cameron Rebosio Contributors Chrissi Angeles, Dale F. Bentson, Mike Berry, Carol Blitzer, Peter Canavese, Yoshi Kato, Chris Kenrick, Jack McKinnon, Alissa Merksamer, Sheryl Nonnenberg, Kaila Prins, Ruth Schechter, Monica Schreiber, Jay Thorwaldson ADVERTISING Vice President Sales & Marketing Tom Zahiralis (223-6570)
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Computer System Associates Ryan Dowd, Chris Planessi The Palo Alto Weekly (ISSN 0199-1159) is published every Friday by Embarcadero Media, 450 Cambridge Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94306, (650) 326-8210. Periodicals postage paid at Palo Alto, CA and additional mailing offices. Adjudicated a newspaper of general circulation for Santa Clara County. The Palo Alto Weekly is delivered free to homes in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley, East Palo Alto, to faculty and staff households on the Stanford campus and to portions of Los Altos Hills. If you are not currently receiving the paper, you may request free delivery by calling 326-8210. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302. Š2018 by Embarcadero Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The Palo Alto Weekly is available on the Internet via Palo Alto Online at: www.PaloAltoOnline.com Our email addresses are: editor@paweekly.com, letters@paweekly.com, digitalads@paweekly.com, ads@paweekly.com Missed delivery or start/stop your paper? Call (650) 223-6557, or email circulation@paweekly.com. You may also subscribe online at www.PaloAltoOnline.com. Subscriptions are $60/yr.
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Divisive downtown project returns to council
The Palo Alto City Council will face a tough dilemma on Monday, when it gets yet another look at Elizabeth Wong’s proposed development at 429 University Ave.: approve the project over the objections of city staff or deny it and face an almost certain lawsuit. The project, which the council first considered in 2015 and which has already been subject to three council hearings and a slew of design reviews, is returning to the council after receiving a vote of no-confidence from the Architectural Review Board and a recommendation to “partially deny� from Interim Planning Director Jonathan Lait. These denials followed the council’s decision in February 2017 to reject the appeal from a nearby property owner, Michael Harbour, and to approve the mixed-use project at the site that was once occupied by Shady Lane. That approval, however, came with conditions that Wong’s architects improve the design of the building’s exterior wall, enhance landscaping and come up with different colors and “craftsmanship-related detailing� in the exterior. The Architectural Review Board considered the project revisions at three hearings before concluding in October that Wong had failed to meet these conditions. Lait then ruled that the project complied with two of the three conditions but failed when it comes to colors and craftsmanship-related detail. Before issuing his letter of denial, Lait had proposed that Wong incorporate more detailing into the design to secure complete approval — a suggestion that he said Wong had refused, prompting his ruling. Wong’s attorney, Timothy Kassouni, challenged this characterization and claimed that there was no “refusal� because staff had not proposed any “specific� changes that would lead to approval. He also accused the board of bias and criticized Lait for failing to “intervene and restore some semblance of objectivity and discretion to the process.� Wong’s company, Kipling Post LP, is appealing Lait’s decision to the council and threatening legal action if the council doesn’t overrule its staff and advisory board. “Should the appeal be denied, Kipling Post will immediately file a Complaint against the City of Palo Alto,� Kassouni wrote to the city. “This legal action will compel issuance of the building permit and will award Kipling Post all damages and attorney’s fees attributable to the City of Palo Alto.� Q —Gennady Sheyner
Vice President Michael I. Naar (223-6540) Vice President & CFO Peter Beller (223-6545)
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News Digest
Teacher dies in officer-involved shooting
Kyle Hart, a teacher at Frank S. Greene Middle School in Palo Alto, died Monday after he was shot by a police officer called to his Redwood City home in response to his attempted suicide. The San Mateo County Coroner’s Office identified Hart on Monday evening. Shortly after, the school district notified Greene Middle School parents in an email offering counseling support and resources for students. Staff had been notified earlier Monday, according to Superintendent Don Austin. Hart, 33, had taught English and social studies at Greene for three years and was at JLS Middle School for four years before that, according to Austin. Hart’s wife called police just before 9 a.m. on Monday requesting help for her husband, who was attempting suicide, according to a Redwood City Police Department press release. Several officers responded and found Hart in the side yard of their home, holding a butcher knife, according to police. The first two officers on the scene tried to get him to drop the knife, police said. Hart reportedly refused to do so and started running at the officers, who are both trained in crisis intervention techniques. Preliminary information suggests that one of the officers used a Taser stun gun “in an attempt to immobilize� Hart but was unsuccessful, police said. The other officer, described as a 20-year veteran of the police force, used a firearm to stop Hart, the release states. This officer has been placed on paid administrative leave, as is standard protocol, according to the police department. A Palo Alto Unified teacher started a GoFundMe campaign on Tuesday to raise funds for Hart’s wife and two young children. By Wednesday, the GoFundMe had raised more than $130,000 toward the $150,000 goal. Q —Elena Kadvany
Upfront NEIGHBORHOODS
Residents in ‘glass houses’ throw stones at proposal Eichler neighbors raise privacy issues in dispute over planned two-story home by Sue Dremann
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setback, added trees in the yard to block views and removed a rear second-floor balcony and window seats, among other changes. They did not hear any further complaints for 10 months — until the two days before the appeal deadline, Le said. City staff had recommended approval of the project, which meets the city’s single-family individualreview guidelines and complies with R-1 zone development regulations. City planners felt the design sufficiently addressed the privacy issues and did not agree with the Raisinghanis’ request to increase the setback. “An increase in the rear setback would push the second-floor volume forward,” potentially in violation of the individual-review guidelines, staff noted in an Oct. 29 report to the council. Staff also did not find practical the argument to move all of the upper-story windows from the back to the sides of the house. Typically, it is best practice to have the bedroom exit windows on the rear of the second story rather than on the sides because of the large backyard setbacks, staff noted. The distance between the proposed second story and the Raisinghanis’ property is 29 feet; the side setbacks on either side are six feet. Staff found that putting the windows on the sides of the house would potentially cause a privacy problem for the side neighbors. The Raisinghanis told the
Top, an early design of a proposed two-story home in Palo Alto’s Fairmeadow neighborhood included a second-floor balcony and seating. Neighbors’ concerns about how the home would infringe on their privacy led homeowners Ming Li and Meng Long to modify the design, above, which Chief Building Official Amy French approved in August. Her decision was appealed in September by Li and Long’s rear neighbors. council that they aren’t against a two-story home — they have one — but their windows face to the front. “The bottom line is about privacy,” Manoj Raisinghani said. “We want to be 40 feet away like our neighbors in terms of a setback.” Planting trees as screens also won’t work, he said, noting that when the winter comes and leaves drop, privacy disappears. Other residents in the 244-house south Palo Alto neighborhood are divided over their support for the project. A neighbor of the
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Raisinghanis told the council that they can see into his home and he can see into their bathroom when the leaves fall off the trees in winter, he said, so he questioned their need for greater privacy. John Hurst, another neighbor, said he approves of further discussion of the project and emphasized the need to have more changes to the city’s ordinances when it comes to Eichlers. Manoj Raisinghani also urged the city to update its Eichler guidelines. “They need to reflect privacy as
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he right to privacy in one’s backyard and home is at the center of another Palo Alto controversy, this one over a proposal to build a two-story house in the Fairmeadow neighborhood of Eichler houses. Homeowners Ming Li and Meng Long have sought to replace their one-story midcentury home at 3743 Redwood Circle with a two-story one since July 2017. The plans went through multiple revisions and two Palo Alto Planning Director’s hearings before finally securing an approval from Chief Planning Official Amy French on Aug. 31. But two days before a 14-day period to file an appeal was to expire, neighbors Manoj and Jasleen Raisinghani, whose own two-story home on Carlson Circle sits behind Li and Long’s residence, asked for major revisions to the design. Their request includes a 40-foot setback for the second story (twice the minimum distance from the rear property line that’s required by the city); re-positioning the second floor so it is more centrally situated above the first floor; relocating three emergency-exit windows on the second floor from the rear of the house to the side, and using opaque glass for a 1-foot-8-inch-wide window facing the Raisinghanis’ home. “Being in an Eichler community, our back wall of the house opens into the backyard and is a series of full-length sliding glass doors,” Jasleen Raisinghani wrote in her appeal. “This is our outside-in and inside-out experience that Eichlers are so well-known for. The city development guidelines need to uphold that experience in such classic neighborhoods and communities.” The City Council was to approve the design on Oct. 29, but council members chose to schedule a hearing instead. The public hearing was set for Nov. 19, but it is now delayed indefinitely because the Raisinghanis are in India, Li and Long stated in a letter they sent on Dec. 1 to City Councilman Cory Wolbach, asking for his help. The issue of privacy in Joseph Eichler-developed tracts has erupted before, leading the council to approve single-story regulations for some Eichler neighborhoods on a case-by-case basis as well as adopt in April voluntary guidelines for Eichler redesigns. Li and her architect, Ket Le, told the council on Oct. 29 that the Raisinghanis’ appeal came as a surprise. Li and Le had been working with city staff and with the neighbors to try to satisfy concerns regarding privacy and had already made major revisions to the design, they said. They added opaque glazing to the bottom half of the rearfacing windows, increased the rear
a primary focus and not just to be one of the things in the mathematics of doing the development. I’m here more about the spirit of quality of life and not as much about the math and the guidelines that have been set up as a one-size-fits-all. It doesn’t work for everybody, and it’s OK,” he said. “We are very open to having harmonious living with our neighbors. We do not want to have a situation where we cannot face each other, or face each other with tension,” he said. Meanwhile, a frustrated Li and Long appealed to Wolbach, whose term is about to expire, in early December. The couple and their son, who has special needs, are living in a home with a leaky roof, they wrote. On Thanksgiving, a rain storm exacerbated their situation. “So while everyone was celebrating this joyful holiday, we were trying to stay dry inside of our own house. Worse still, the leaky roof is just one of many major problems; others include cracked walls and an uneven foundation,” they wrote. The letter asked Wolbach to review the project and advise them on how to move forward to obtain approval in a timely manner. Clarity over Eichler property rights is not likely to come soon in the form of city policy changes. In April, when the council adopted the voluntary Eichler Neighborhood Design Guidelines, council members also directed staff to return with concepts for a new zoning district with restrictions, similar to the single-story overlay, to which Eichler-tract homeowners could “opt in.” The policy hasn’t moved forward because of limited resources, staff wrote in its Oct. 29 report to the council. Q Staff Writer Sue Dremann can be emailed at sdremann@ paweekly.com.
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 7
Upfront
Hotel conversion (continued from page 5)
“We’re going back to take it out,” Keene said. Staff noted that the zoning wording affects numerous downtown properties, including some that want to shift from one allowed commercial use to another but can’t because of this new clause. Interim Planning Director Jonathan Lait cited as one example The Cheesecake Factory building on University Avenue, which has been vacant since the restaurant’s May departure. The building owner, Roxy Rapp, wants to convert it to retail
but can’t because of the “same use” clause. But the council’s response, in the words of Councilman Cory Wolbach, amounted to this: Maybe half of the sponge should stay there. The council voted 6-2, with Councilmen Greg Tanaka and Adrian Fine dissenting and Councilman Greg Scharff recused, to make the zoning change but to do so through its normal process, which would entail a review by the Planning and Transportation Commission and is expected to take at least four months to complete. The council reached its decision after hearing from about two dozen residents, all of whom urged the
council to reject the staff proposal to restore the zoning provision to its pre-2016 state. Staff had also proposed the council expedite the adoption of the ordinance by doing so on a temporary basis — an unusual process that would skip the review by the Planning and Transportation Commission. This method is intended for policies that preserve the “public health, safety and welfare.” Many in the public and some on the council rejected the notion that the zone change meets these criteria. They also criticized city officials for their opaque negotiations with AJ Capital, which in October issued the city a “term sheet”
Holiday Waste Service Schedule
GreenWaste of Palo Alto is closed on Christmas (December 25) and New Year’s Day (January 1). If your regular collection day falls on or after one of these holidays, your collection day will be moved to the next day for the rest of the week. Regular collection schedules will resume the following week.
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REBECCA OVERMAN SAT | DECEMBER 15TH
that called for the city to grant it Midtown resident Greer Stone several zone changes by Dec. 18 in called the proposed conversion of exchange for giving the President President Hotel “antithetical to the tenants an extra six months in their honorable goal that this city and apartments. the council have to create more Though the city didn’t agree to housing.” the term sheet, it did initially sched“Anything that removes housing ule the two zone revisions that AJ and replaces it with labor-intense Capital had requested — the re- businesses like a hotel is preposmoval of the “same use” clause terous,” Stone said. and the abolition of the downtown The council agreed that scrapcap on non-residential development ping the grandfathered-facility — on its Dec. 3 agenda (both items wording would lead to an outcome were ultimately continued to later that directly conflicts its goal of dates). promoting housing. Councilman Beth Rosenthal, one of about Adrian Fine observed that Presitwo dozen residents who addressed dent Hotel, a prominent Spanish the council on the issue, chided Colonial building built in 1929 that city leaders for “working behind initially operated as a hotel before the scenes to acbeing converted commodate AJ into apartments in Capital Ventures” ‘We need more the 1950s, is prewhile ostensibly cisely the kind of advocating for President Hotels project that many transparency. in the community as apartment “How can this would oppose if it council profess buildings, not were proposed as a their profound fewer.’ new development. sympathy for the It is far taller and — Cory Wolbach, soon-to-be-evicted denser than today’s Palo Alto City Councilman residents of Presizoning code allows dent Hotel while and it only contains all the while negotiating with the 10 parking spots for its 75 small evicters who are facilitating the units. process?” Rosenthal asked. Wolbach, who is concluding his Becky Sanders, the moderator of council term this month, also laudthe Ventura Neighborhood Asso- ed the existing President Hotel and ciation, said her neighbors are livid lamented its potential conversion. about the council accommodating “I think it would be a bad idea a developer and moving so fast for us to lose over 70 units of reaon a policy to aid the conversion sonably priced housing. ... We need of President Hotel. She said many more President Hotels as apartment residents resent the city’s “double buildings, not fewer,” Wolbach standard” in play when it comes to said. the city’s work with AJ Capital. Fine proposed adopting an or“You’re bending over backward dinance that would remove the to change laws in order to enrich a grandfather clause on a temporary single property owner and lose for- basis but that would also prohibit ever 75 units,” Sanders said. “I’ve conversions from residential to got to call you out on this. ... If you commercial. Most of his colreally believe in supporting hous- leagues preferred not to adopt anying in Palo Alto please do not let thing outright, thus giving planning AJ Capital and their friends bully commissioners a chance to do you into changing a law to benefit (continued on next page) their vested interests.”
CityView A round-up
of Palo Alto government action this week
City Council (Dec. 10)
H O L I D AY P O P - U P
Rinconada: The council approved a five-year contract with Team Sheeper for operation of Rinconada Pool. Yes: Unanimous Garage: The council approved several contracts, including a $39.4-million contract with Swinerton Builders, for construction of the California Avenue garage. Yes: Unanimous Zoning: The council directed the Planning and Transportation Commission to consider the removal of a “grandfathered facility” provision that requires noncomplying buildings facing renovation to maintain same use. The council also recommended supporting a revision to the zoning code that would prohibit such facilities from converting from residential to commercial use. Yes: DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Wolbach No: Fine, Tanaka Recused: Scharff
Board of Education (Dec. 11)
Budget: The board discussed the district’s budget forecast and process in a study session. Action: None
Planning and Transportation Commission (Dec. 12)
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Page 8 • December 14, 2018 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
Hotel: The commission approved a proposal to waive the 50-foot setback requirement for 3200 El Camino Real to allow the construction of a new hotel. Yes: Alcheck, Lauing, Riggs, Waldfogel Absent: Gardias, Monk Recused: Summa Residence: The commission recommended approving a two-family residence at 2321 Wellesley St.Yes: Alcheck, Lauing, Riggs, Waldfogel Absent: Gardias, Monk Recused: Summa Wireless: The commission recommended revising the city’s zoning rules on wireless communications to make them consistent with recently approved federal regulations. The commission also requested further analysis of the various legal challenges to the new federal rules. Yes: Alcheck, Lauing, Riggs, Waldfogel Absent: Gardias, Monk No: Summa
Upfront
Hotel conversion (continued from page 8)
their own review. They ultimately backed Councilwoman Karen Holman’s motion to support an option banning residential-to-commercial conversions downtown and to give the planning commission a chance to vet it before the council adopts it. Holman said delaying the adoption is a matter of “due diligence” and noted that the option banning residential conversions hadn’t been presented to the council by city staff prior to Monday’s meeting. It’s difficult, she said, to properly evaluate the proposal in real time. “I want to feel 100 percent confident that there are no negative consequences to this action,” Holman said. Councilman Tom DuBois agreed, rejecting staff’s argument for the expedited process, and said following the normal sequence for reviewing ordinances is the “more transparent process.” “I really think the appearance of
rushing here is not helpful,” DuBois said. Council members also defended staff from public accusations of shady dealmaking with AJ Capital. Vice Mayor Eric FIlseth, who supported sending the issue to the planning commission, said he has seen no evidence of a “deep state conspiracy.” “Everyone is trying to do the right thing,” Filseth said. Keene also rejected the notion that staff had any improper negotiations with the developer. “If there is some conspiracy at staff level, it is such deep state territory that I knew nothing about it,” Keene said. At the same time, staff acknowledged that it has made a significant — if inadvertent — error in approving the “same use” phrase in the “grandfather facility” section in the first place. The nine words in questions — “for continual use and occupancy, by the same use” — also appears in a different section of the zoning code. Lait
surmised that they may have been accidentally copied from one section to another. While Councilwoman Lydia Kou and Holman both questioned whether the clause addition was truly a mistake, Lait noted that the zone change had not been highlighted in staff reports or mentioned in presentations. “If it were intentional, we would’ve written about it. We would’ve talked about it in staff reports. We would’ve had discussion with the planning commission and council about the change we’re making,” Lait said. “There’s no evidence in the public record that this dialogue ever took place.” City Attorney Molly Stump called the error “very unusual.” “In my time of working with cities, I haven’t seen a staff error like this,” Stump said. That said, Stump said it’s important to acknowledge that human errors do occur and that, in this case, staff had acknowledged it and recommended a method to fix it. While council members said
they would prefer an ordinance that prohibits the conversion of residential to commercial use, Stump also proposed on Monday that the revised zoning provision also include a clause that allows applicants to request a “waiver” from this restriction on conversions if they can show that it would violate state or federal law. Stump called this addition “good housekeeping” that could insulate the city from legal challenges. But Jeff Levinsky, the resident who first alerted planning staff to the
“grandfathered facility” clause and its implications for the President Hotel project, criticized Stump’s proposed policy, which he suggested would facilitate more backroom dealing. “If our city attorney believes there is some problem or that this law would violate state or federal law, you should know about that before you approve the law,” Levinsky told the council. Q Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be emailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.
About the cover: Clockwise from top left: A historical photo
titled “Yell leaders and pom pom girls” features in the bottom row J. Fosnaugh, H. Hardy and T. May and, in the top row, T. Fairclough, R. Moffit and J. Kudlich. (Photo courtesy Palo Alto Historical Association.) The Palo Alto High School concert choir rehearses in the new Performing Arts Center on May 4, 2016. (File photo/Veronica Weber.) Participants in October’s Palo Alto High School Centennial march pose in front of the original Embarcadero Road campus buildings. (Photo courtesy David Hickey.) Members of Palo Alto High School men’s basketball team, including Jeremy Lin, celebrate their March 2006 victory over Mater Dei 51-47 during the boys’ Division 2 State Championship game. (Weekly file photo.)
Peninsula Christmas Services Join Us For Christmas Christmas Eve (All services will be about an hour)
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Celebrate Christmas CHRISTMAS EVE - MONDAY, DECEMBER 24 4pm 830pm 9pm
Family Service with Carols & Pageant Prelude - Early Wind-Brass Music Featuring - The Whole Noyse Candlelight Service with Choir
CHRISTMAS DAY - TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25 10am
Eucharist with Carols
All are Welcome to Share the Joy ALL SAINTS’ EPISCOPAL CHURCH 555 WAVERLEY STREET, PALO ALTO www.asaints.org
FIRST PALO ALTO UNITED METHODIST CHURCH WHERE HOPE IS RENEWED Christmas Eve Services 5:00 PM Family Service 8:00 PM Lessons & Carols Christmas Day Service 11:00 AM 625 Hamilton Ave. Palo Alto, CA 94301 www.FirstPaloAlto.com (650) 323-6167
Christmas Service
Sun, Dec 23, 9 & 11 AM
Christmas Eve Service Mon, Dec 24, 5 PM
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 9
Support our Kids with a gift to the Holiday Fund Last Year’s Grant Recipients 10 Books A Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$15,000 49ers Academy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Able Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Acterra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Ada’s Café . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Adolescent Counseling Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$7,500 All Students Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 Art in Action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Art of Yoga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Bayshore Christian Ministries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Buena Vista Homework Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 CASSY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto. . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 Downtown Streets Team. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$7,500 DreamCatchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 East Palo Alto Kids Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 East Palo Alto Tennis & Tutoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$7,500 Ellen Fletcher Middle School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$4,000 Environmental Volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Family Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$7,500 Foundation for a College Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$7,500 Frank S. Greene Jr. Middle School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$4,000 Friends of Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Get Involved Palo Alto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 Health Connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Hidden Villa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 JLS Middle School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$4,000 Kara. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$7,500 Live in Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Marine Science Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Music in the Schools Foundation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 New Creation Home Ministries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 New Voices for Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$3,000 Nuestra Casa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$7,500 One East Palo Alto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Palo Alto Art Center Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Palo Alto Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$4,000 Peninsula Bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Peninsula HealthCare Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Project WeHOPE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$15,000 Quest Learning Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Ravenswood Education Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 Rosalie Rendu Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$3,500 Silicon Valley FACES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Silicon Valley Urban Debate League . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 St. Francis of Assisi Youth Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Stanford Jazz Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$2,500 YMCA East Palo Alto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$7,500 YMCA Ross Road . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Youth Community Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$15,000 Youth Speaks Out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$15,000
Child Care Facility Improvement Grants Children’s Center of the Stanford Community . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Children’s Pre-School Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Friends of Preschool Family. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Grace Lutheran Preschool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 The Learning Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Palo Alto Community Child Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000 Palo Alto Friends Nursery School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Parents Nursery School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000 Peninsula Family Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$5,000
E
Give to the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund and your donation is doubled. You give to non-profit groups that work right here in our community. It’s a great way to ensure that your charitable donations are working at home.
ach year the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund raises money to support programs serving families and children in the Palo
Alto area. Since the Weekly and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation cover all the administrative costs, every dollar raised goes directly to support community programs through grants to non-profit organizations. And with the generous support of matching grants from local foundations, including
As of Dec. 12, 197 donors have contributed $198,275 to the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund. 22 Anonymous ........................$108,275
the Packard, Hewlett, Peery and Arrillaga foundations, your tax-deductible gift will be
New Donors
doubled in size. A donation of $100 turns into
John Pavkovich..................................500 Eileen Stolee......................................100 Sallie Whaley .........................................* Ann Burrell & Allen Smith .....................* Patti Yanklowitz ................................150 Linda Selden..........................................* Dena Hill ...........................................500 Michael Patrick..................................200 Bonnie Packer ...................................100 Romola Georgia ....................................* Martha Shirk .....................................500 Christina Kenrick ............................1,000
$200 with the foundation matching gifts. Whether as an individual, a business or in honor of someone else, help us reach our goal of $350,000 by making a generous contribution to the Holiday Fund. With your generosity, we can give a major boost to the programs in our community helping kids and families.
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_____________________________________________________________ (Name of person)
Page 10 • December 14, 2018 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
Please make checks payable to: Silicon Valley Community Foundation Send coupon and check, if applicable, to:
T In my name as shown above T In the name of business above
Non-profits: Grant application & guidelines at www.PaloAltoOnline.com/holiday_fund
Dawes Family ....................................250 Ken Bencala & Sally O’Neil ................200 Nina & Norman Kulgein ........................* Tom & Nancy Fiene ...............................* Lee Zulman ...........................................* Merrill & Lee Newman ......................250 Judy & Lee Shulman ..........................200 Donna & Jerry Silverberg ...................100 Victor Befera .....................................100 Kay & Don Remsen ...............................* Beth & Peter Rosenthal .....................300 Robyn H. Crumly...................................* Charles & Barbara Stevens ....................* Amado Padilla & Deborah Farrington...........................500 Jerry & Linda Elkind ...........................500
01 – Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund c/o Silicon Valley Community Foundation P.O. Box 45389 San Francisco, CA 94145 The Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund is a donor advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization. A contribution to this fund allows your donation to be tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
Upfront
Rail
Donald & Virginia Fitton ................ 25 Don & Bonnie Miller.................... 100 Roger V. Smith ............................ 300 In Memory Of Bill Land ...........................................* Emmett Lorey...................................* Ted Linden................................... 200 Marie & Don Snow ..................... 150 Ben Barres ................................... 100 Kathleen Morris ...............................* Our Loving Parents Albert & Beverly Pellizzari ............................* August L. King .................................*
Previously Published David Labaree ............................. 300 Bruce Campbell........................... 200 Janis Ulevich ................................ 100 Mike Gordon............................... 250 Bill Reller...........................................* Ellen & Mike Turbow ................... 200 Xiaofan Lin .................................... 50 M D Savioe.......................................* Ron Wolf..................................... 200 Marcia & Michael Katz ................ 200 Tom Goodrich ............................. 100 Leif & Sharon Erickson ................ 250 Stephen Levy .............................. 500 John & Meg Monroe................... 500 Daniel Cox .................................. 200 Richard Zuanich........................... 200 Kieschnick Family .............................* Deborah Williams........................ 500 Joan & Roger Warnke ......................* Havern Family .......................... 5,000 Bill Johnson & Terri Lobdell ....... 1,000 Mike & Jean Couch ..................... 250 Tony & Judy Kramer .........................* Peter Stern .......................................* Dorothy Saxe............................... 100 David & Nancy Kalkbrenner ........ 100 David & Lynn Mitchell ................. 450 Barbara Riper ...................................* Nancy & Joe Huber ..................... 100 Sue Kemp ................................... 250 Richard Baumgartner & Elizabeth Salzer .............................* Sally & Craig Nordlund ................ 500 Ted & Ginny Chu..............................* Stev & Mary Chapel ...................... 50 Ruth Hammett ............................ 100 Drew McCalley & Marilyn Green ...100 Roy & Carol Blitzer ...........................* Judith Appleby ............................ 200 Carolyn Brennan ..............................* Susana & Doug Woodman ..............* Jody Maxmin....................................* Pat Burt ....................................... 250 Larry Baer .................................... 500 Arthur Keller ....................................* Lawrence Naiman ....................... 100 Pamela Mayerfeld ....................... 100 Eileen Brooks............................... 500 Scott & Jan Kilner ........................ 500 Andrea Smith .............................. 100 Braff Family ................................. 500 Eugene & Mabel Dong................ 200 Debby Roth ................................. 200 Phil Hanawalt & Garciela Spivak...1,000 Lani Freeman & Stephen Monismith.................. 100 Tom & Ellen Ehrlich...................... 350 Robert & Barbara Simpson ...............* Gwen Luce.......................................* Robert Aulger...................................* Pat & John Davis ........................... 50 Art & Peggy Stauffer ................... 500 Kroymann Family ........................ 250 Mahlon & Carol Hubenthal ..............* Karen & Steve Ross ..........................*
Wileta Burch ....................................* Mandy Lowell ..................................* George & Betsy Young .....................* Tom & Pat Sanders ...........................* Gerald & Joyce Barker ................. 200 Brigid Barton & Rob Robinson..... 400 Jim & Alma Phillips ...................... 500 Peggy & Boyce Nute.........................* Michael & Cathie Foster .............. 500 Diane Moore ....................................* Linda & Steve Boxer .........................* Chuck & Jean Thompson ............ 100 Julie Jerome................................. 500 Bonnie Berg .....................................* Gallo Family ................................ 500 Ann & Don Rothblatt .................. 500 Caryn Huberman Yacowitz ..............* Shirley R. Ely ............................. 1,000 Luca & Mary Cafiero ........................* Steve & Diane Ciesinski ............... 500 Jennifer DiBrienza & Jesse Dorogusker 500 James W. & Nancy E. Baer........... 200 The Ely Family.............................. 250 Page & Ferrell Sanders................. 100 JoAnne N. Zschokke.................... 100 Ralph R. Wheeler ........................ 300 Bert Fingerhut & Caroline Hicks .. 250 Kaaren & John Antoun ............ 1,500 Richard Johnsson ..................... 7,000 Bruce Gee & Jane Gee ................ 250 Eric Hahn & Elaine Hahn .......... 1,000 Bob & Dee Crawford........................* Diane & Bob Simoni .................... 200 Jan Thomson & Roy Levin ................* Donald & Adele Langendorf ....... 200 Irvin & Marilyn Yalom .................. 100 Brigid Barton ............................... 500 Jerry & Bobbie Wagger ....................* John & Florine Galen ........................* H. Anton & Carolyn Tucher ......... 250 Phil Fernandez & Daniel Sternbergh ..* Bob & Micki Cardelli.........................* In Memory Of Er-Ying & Yen-Chen Yen ............. 250 Janet Hermsen ............................ 200 Ray Bacchetti............................... 250 Nancy & Bob Lobdell ........................* Ruth & Chet Johnson .......................* Tracy & Alan Herrick .................... 100 Bob Fenster ......................................* David, Zoe & Ken ........................ 100 Mrs. Nancy Yih.................................* Thomas W. & Louise L. Phinney .......* Leo & Sylvia Breidenbach .................* Corrine Aulgur .................................* Duncan Matteson ....................... 250 Pam Grady .................................. 300 Elliot Eisner .......................................* Nate Rosenberg .......................... 200 Francine Mendlin ........................ 250 Bob Donald ......................................* In Honor Of Melissa Baten Caswell ......................* Lucy Berman’s clients................ 2,500 Jill ................................................ 200 Scott............................................ 200 Polly ............................................ 200 Hayley ......................................... 200 Jake ............................................. 200 Garrett ........................................ 200 Gil ............................................... 200 Joe Simitian ......................................* Businesses & Organizations Alta Mesa Cemetery & Funeral Home ....................... 2,000 Bleibler Properties..................... 1,000 Communications & Power Industries....................... 500 deLemos Properties ..................... 200
Now the city is hoping to choose a design option for each rail crossing by February. Yet even as it gets closer to a decision, new ideas are coming to the surface, including a proposal to dig a trench for Caltrain while letting freight trains run at grade and other concepts for redesigning Embarcadero Road to improve traffic conditions. City staff is also considering evaluating the northernmost crossing, Palo Alto Avenue, apart from the grade-separation discussion. Deputy City Manager Rob de Geus suggested at Wednesday’s meeting of the Community Advisory Panel that it may be more effective to consider the grade crossing as part of a broader, multiyear plan for downtown, which could include modifications to University Avenue and the city’s central transit hub. “The notion of having a parallel plan for downtown that includes grade-separating Palo Alto Avenue and improvements to University Avenue and the transit center and engaging Stanford in that work — we think that’s the right way to go,” de Geus said at the meeting of the panel, a group of residents who have been gathering regularly to discuss grade separation. The topic is designated as one of the council’s top priorities for 2018. Yet reaching solutions on the complex subject has proved difficult. The city’s discussion of Churchill Avenue is a perfect case in point. In June, the City Council acknowledged neighborhood concerns about property seizures by scrapping design options that include raising or lowering the railroad track. Yet this elimination of several major options also spawned a flurry of new ones, some of which involve closing Churchill Avenue to traffic near the tracks and pursuing various bike and pedestrian improvements. Because such a move would likely drive additional traffic to Embarcadero Road, residents are also suggesting new design alternatives for Embarcadero, with the goal of improving traffic flow and keeping the added traffic away from residential neighborhoods. These include the creation of new exit ramps from Alma Street that would allow northbound drivers to turn left on Embarcadero, obviating the need for drivers to take neighborhood streets, and the installation of a traffic circle on Embarcadero and Alma — an option that would require the installation of an elevated viaduct for rail. David Shen, a Churchill Avenue resident and member of the Community Advisory Panel, has been developing concepts with Jason Matloff, a fellow Old Palo Alto resident, and Tony Carrasco, an architect who also serves on the panel. On Wednesday, they
Veronica Weber
(continued from page 5)
Commuters on Caltrain wait for the train at the University Avenue station in August 2017. introduced these concepts to the citizens panel. “We just want to stimulate ideas and make sure people are thinking as creatively as possible and think of solutions as a system in Palo Alto and not just a series of intersections,” Shen said. Yet the meeting also highlighted the city’s difficulty in getting the broader public engaged in what could be one of the costliest and most transformative projects in the city’s history. Megan Kanne, a member of the community panel, said some of the residents in her neighborhood of Professorville have raised concerns about the city getting the needed funds to do any work on the Embarcadero Road underpass. “We want to make sure the city isn’t biting off more than it can chew, and we want to make sure if we study these things, we can have the manpower and money that we need to do it correctly,” she said. Kanne said she organized two community meetings to discuss grade separation, each of which attracted 15 to 25 people. “I do think it’s been a challenge to come up with ways to reach out to folks,” Kanne said. The city had better luck on Nov. 28, when it held a community meeting that brought about 150 people to the Mitchell Park Community Center. That meeting focused on the three alternatives now on the table for the Charleston and East Meadow crossings: a trench, a viaduct and a “hybrid” alternative that combines elevated rail tracks and lowered roads. While the prospect of putting the train underground, either in a trench or a tunnel, has been the most popular alternative in recent months, the city’s consultants highlighted at the meeting the major engineering and financial challenges that these options would entail. The trench alternative for the two southernmost intersections would cost between $800 million and $950 million, according to an analysis from the city’s consultant, Aecom. Etty Mercurio, an Aecom consultant, told the crowd at the community meeting that while the trench option would provide benefits visually
and in terms of reducing noise, it would include significant engineering challenges, including the need to divert Adobe and Barron creeks and to relocate utilities. It would also require a high fence along the trench walls, be the most costly to maintain, and exceed Caltrain’s design standards by requiring a 2 percent grade (Caltrain generally has a standard of 1 percent). The “hybrid” option in south Palo Alto would be significantly cheaper than the trench, with an estimated price tag of $200 million to $250 million, according to Aecom. This option also would require less costly maintenance and would not block creeks or require a design exception from Caltrain. It would however, require the city to close portions of Alma near the two crossings and narrow Alma to two lanes during construction. “We can have some major congestion issues during construction,” Mercurio said. A viaduct, meanwhile, would cost between $400 million and $500 million, according to Aecom’s estimates. While it would be visible, unlike the the underground alternatives, it would not obstruct local creeks and its construction wouldn’t affect the roadways as much. Unlike the trench and the “hybrid” alternatives, building a viaduct would obviate the need for temporary “shoofly” tracks for trains to run on while the permanent tracks are under construction. These options, as well as emerging ideas around Embarcadero Road and Palo Alto Avenue, will now go to the council. It will also be the final meeting for Councilman Cory Wolbach, who this year chaired the Rail Committee, and Greg Scharff, who serves on the committee. “There’s a lot at stake in terms of the construction that will have to take place, in terms of the money it will take to actually to do it and, most important, the type of grade separation that the community agrees is the best for Palo Alto,” de Geus said at the Nov. 28 meeting. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Q Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be emailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 11
Upfront
Public Agenda
Holiday Fund
A preview of Palo Alto government meetings next week
specialized music classes to students in the Ravenswood City School District for more than 20 years. It currently serves more than 500 children in preschool through eighth grade at four sites in East Palo Alto and east Menlo Park. Some of their classes are offered during school. Others are offered as free after-school enrichment, something much needed in a district where some parents work long hours and students often stay on campus until 6 p.m. The overall goal is to ensure that all Ravenswood students receive music instruction that meets or exceeds California State Visual and Performing arts (VAPA) standards. Students also get opportunities to perform for the community, helping to build their self-esteem while they reap the artistic, social and cognitive benefits of arts education. Most Music in the Schools instructors have several teaching gigs to make ends meet (local luminaries on the team include Thomas Shoebotham, director of the Palo Alto Philharmonic). The nonprofit’s teachers also sometimes take on multiple types of classes within the program. Hardbarger, for example, at the request of students, has led a ukulele club for fourth- and fifthgraders at Willow Oaks.
(continued from page 5)
CITY COUNCIL ... The council plans to pass a resolution in honor of retiring City Manager James Keene, hold a study session with Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, consider an appeal of the planning director’s denial of proposed changes to 429 University Ave., consider raises for city attorney, city auditor and city clerk and discuss the city’s next steps on grade separation. The meeting will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 17, in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave. BOARD OF EDUCATION ... The school board will vote on a first-interim budget report and discuss the next three years of school calendars; a resolution in support of a county application for matching funds for a Magical Bridge playground; a resolution amending the board’s conflict of interest code; and hear informational reports on school impact fees and legal expenses, among other agenda items. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 18, at the district office, 25 Churchill Ave. PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION ... The commission plans to meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 18, in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave. The agenda was not available by press time. ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW BOARD ... The board plans to review a proposal for a two-family residence at 2321 Wellesley St., conside a proposal to demolish Hotel Parmani at 3200 El Camino Real and construct a new 99-room hotel, and review a proposal by Vinculum/Verizon for wireless communications equipment in south Palo Alto and near Stanford Shopping Center. The meeting will begin at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 20, in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave. PUBLIC ART COMMISSION ... The commission plans to approve public artwork for the new public safety building, consider removal of reallocated funds for University Avenue and the allocation of $2,500 in funding to support a public art event at Cubberley Community Center. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 20, in the Community Meeting Room at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave.
Keeping things going, though, is an ongoing struggle, even though the foundation doesn’t operate from a central office, which helps keep costs down. A $5,000 grant received from the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund in 2018 came at an especially critical time, as the program recently lost several important sources of funding, including the Peery Foundation, the Palo Alto Community Fund grants and the Ravenswood City School District itself because of continued financial instability in the district (in 2015-16, the district provided $40,000). “We’ve lost a lot of funding, and we still have to pay teachers and maintain instruments. Our money comes from the kindness of donors, and we are grateful for every penny we get,” Sofman said. At the same time as the folk dance class at Las Robles, in a music room across the quad, the afterschool beginning strings ensemble was working on a Suzuki piece. Students on cellos, violas and violins rehearsed under the enthusiastic, high-energy guidance of experienced teacher Shelly Monarez. As they rehearsed, she accompanied them on piano, calling out tips — “Feet flat on the floor! Your violin goes on your shoulder!” — and shouting encouragement. The program not only gives students high-quality lessons in music but, like the dance class, offers
Here come the Holidays
Page 12 • December 14, 2018 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
lessons in arts diversity. “The strings teacher incorporates music from a variety of cultures too. It’s important for these kids to know their cultures matter — it’s not just (by) a bunch of dead white guys,” Sofman said. Toward the end of the lesson, Monarez asked the group, which has only been meeting since October, to try playing along to a recording. “That was so fun!” one young violinist exclaimed afterward. Monarez beamed: “Wasn’t it, though?” Sofman said she would love to start a choir, which, as she pointed out, is quite cost efficient since not much equipment is needed. She’d also to see the popular folk dance program expanded to other sites and/or other times so that more children could have access to it. Back in the dance class, the kids wrapped things up with an Israeli song about jungle animals, which involved mimicking the slithering motion of a snake. Though the class was originally intended for secondto-fifth graders, a few first-graders have since joined and seem to be keeping up just fine. “Just do the best you can,” Hardbarger told the newest members of the group. She paused and smiled. “And have a good time!” Q Arts & Entertainment Editor Karla Kane can be emailed at kkane@paweekly.com.
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 13
Editorial Give for the kids
on’t let the booming Silicon Valley technology-driven economy lull you into thinking that there isn’t a continuing divide, even in the affluent Palo Alto area, between those riding high and the many families living on the edge or in need of social services. The Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund, now in its 26th year, provides a grassroots opportunity for the community to make a donation and know that it will be combined with hundreds of others and disbursed to approximately 50 carefully vetted local agencies, mostly in Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. Earlier this year, we gave away more than $400,000 thanks to you. There are two important reasons why giving to the Holiday Fund uniquely leverages your donation: First, every dollar raised is given away (in the form of grants to nonprofits that apply for funding) because the Weekly and Silicon Valley Community Foundation underwrite all the expenses. So none of your money is spent on overhead or other administrative costs. And second, thanks to the support of the Packard, Hewlett, Peery and Arrillaga foundations and two Palo Alto families who wish to remain anonymous, any donation you make is doubled in size. So if you give $100, the Holiday Fund is able to grant $200 to a worthwhile program serving children and families in our area. Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue to ask for your donations and publish the names of those who contribute to help inspire others to give and be publicly thanked (if they wish). The list of organizations the Holiday Fund supported this last year can be found online at paloaltoonline.com/holiday_fund and are also listed on page 10; they include groups in Palo Alto and East Palo Alto that are providing counseling, tutoring, mentoring, reading programs, environmental education, health services, child care, food, shelter, music, art and science curricula and much more. Whether you give $25 or $25,000, it is a powerful statement when hundreds of local people unite around a common philanthropic objective and combine their giving to help others in the community. Many donors make a Holiday Fund gift in memory of a loved one or to honor a friend. To donate, either go online to PaloAltoOnline. com/holiday_fund or use the coupon below. Along with the thousands of kids and families who ultimately benefit from your gift, we are grateful for your help. Q
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Support our Kids with a gift to the Holiday Fund.
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Spectrum Editorials, letters and opinions
Review is inappropriate
Editor, I was shocked to read in the Nov. 23 edition of the Palo Alto Weekly, in the books for young adults section, a review by one Debby Duncan, identified as a Stanford University writer, on the book “Unpresidented: a biography of Donald Trump,” authored by Martha Brokenbraugh, a former editor of the Stanford Daily. In the book, Ms. Brokenbrough offers “concrete examples of a history of practicing racial discrimination, bullying, dodging the truth and the draft, ties to the Mafia, business and marriage failures, financial connections to Russia and most especially and repeatedly lying.” Ms. Duncan calls this text “a necessary, teen-friendly tome in an easy-to-read font, nicely broken up by photos, pullout quotes and tweets.” She further asserts that teens who today read the book are likely to be of voting age in 2020, and both young adults and seniors should “know the facts.” As a longtime reader of the Weekly, I am shocked that the magazine would review such a polemic in its young-adult section and by a reviewer who urges teens to not only read such a biased work (I am a former Stanford University professor of history) but to act on its message in preparation of the 2020 presidential election. Leon G. Campbell Albion Way, Woodside
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T I wish to contribute anonymously. T Please withhold the amount of my contribution. Please make checks payable to: Silicon Valley Community Foundation Send coupon and check, if applicable, to: 01 – Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund c/o Silicon Valley Community Foundation P.O. Box 45389 San Francisco, CA 94145 The Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund is a donor advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization. A contribution to this fund allows your donation to be tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
Page 14 • December 14, 2018 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
Public benefit, private benefit
Editor, Years ago, when Palo Alto was divided into “business” and “residentialists,” the city authorities almost always assumed that the most profitable land use was a public benefit because it would produce money for all the amenities for which the city is famous. But after Proposition 13, assessments on commercial property didn’t rise as much as land values. So developers looked for increased residential density in zoning to maximize profit. But for some mysterious reason, cities didn’t feel they could simply charge money for giving a change in zoning. Stephanie Munoz Alma Street, Palo Alto
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In response to “Proposed law could block President Hotel conversion”
Posted Dec. 11 at 1:28 p.m. by Pat Burt, a resident of Community Center The city staff offered a reasonable explanation last night for why they believe the grandfathering provision was placed in the current code inadvertently, but their explanation was just a good supposition. No one seems to actually know or has offered how it got there or why. Either way, it is the current zoning law and with greater impact than was appreciated until recently. The council majority took the right actions last night to deny the debatable legal claim that it qualifies as an urgency ordinance. The PTC and council should carefully review the option of preventing residential to commercial conversions of non-conforming buildings as so well put forth by Jeff Levinsky and Winter Dellenbach at the meeting. While this and the other zoning changes are being considered, it would be foolish for A.J. Capital to expel the remaining tenants, which would simultaneously further inflame opposition to their interests while reducing their rental income in the near term.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? The Palo Alto Weekly encourages comments on our coverage or on issues of local interest.
Do you agree with the City Council’s decision on Monday about grandfathered facilities? Submit letters to the editor of up to 300 words to letters@paweekly.com. Submit guest opinions of 1,000 words to editor@paweekly.com. Include your name, address and daytime phone number so we can reach you. We reserve the right to edit contributions for length, objectionable content, libel and factual errors known to us. Anonymous letters will generally not be accepted. Submitting a letter to the editor or guest opinion constitutes a granting of permission to the Palo Alto Weekly and Embarcadero Media to also publish it online, including in our online archives and as a post on Town Square. For more information contact Editor Jocelyn Dong or Editorial Assistant Christine Lee at editor@paweekly.com or 650-326-8210.
Spectrum
Guest Opinions Keeping options open: Integrating rail and community by Yoriko Kishimoto alo Alto is facing potentially its biggest capital project since the construction of Oregon Expressway in 1962: the re-building of the Caltrain corridor through Palo Alto, particularly the rail crossings. I was the first chair of the City Council’s Rail Committee and founder of the Peninsula Cities Consortium, a coalition of cities that held weekly hearings, invited speakers and coordinated multi-city responses to the proposed high speed rail coming up the Peninsula. As such, I was among the first to advocate against an elevated “viaduct” rail option, since it seemed so intrusive visually. The current council Rail Committee recommended at its Oct. 17 meeting the removal of the viaduct options from consideration. But today, for the city to reach the right decision, I am, to my surprise, advocating that we keep key options on the table, including the viaduct, the trench, the tunnel and, perhaps for now, the “do nothing” option for two of the crossings. Most Palo Altans agree Caltrain provides essential and efficient regional transportation services to the University Avenue and California Avenue districts, as well as Stanford University and the Research Park, which is preferable to more auto lanes on U.S. Highway 101, Interstate 280 and El Camino Real.
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Just to review quickly, the average daily traffic (ADT, aka vehicles) at the Caltrain crossings is (according to a 2016 City of Palo Alto analysis, posted at bit.ly/2C4F0SV): • At Palo Alto Avenue (Alma): 2 lanes, 15,000 ADT • University Avenue: 4 underpass lanes, 19,000 ADT • Embarcadero Road: 3 underpass lanes, 25,000 ADT • Churchill Avenue, 2 lanes 11,000 ADT • Oregon Expressway, 4 underpass lanes, 31,000 ADT • Meadow Drive, 2 lanes, 9,000 ADT • Charleston Rd: 2 lanes, 16,000 ADT • San Antonio: 4-6 overpass lanes, 36,000 ADT Staff and consultants have done enough research to show us that there are more options at Charleston and Meadow that will not lead to significant property takings or road closings. At this point, I propose: 1. The city prioritize making a decision at Charleston and Meadow and compete for Measure A grade separation funding. 2. We keep the options of the viaduct anda tunnel on the table at least through an urban design and environmental/economic analysis stage. It seems prudent to pay $250,000 more in studies to make the right decision for projects that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. 3. We sponsor design charettes, field trips, and research and education to a broad spectrum of policy makers, residents, business leaders and subject-level experts.
Should persistent developers get to ignore city laws? by Michael Harbour ow many years should a developer be allowed to wear down city staff and residents in order to push through bad construction plans? The City Council will hold a crucial meeting on Dec. 17 to evaluate the future of 429 University Ave., at Kipling Street, in downtown Palo Alto after facing years of pressure from the property owner to accept her development plans or face litigation. Now is the time that the Council should follow the respective recommendations of the Palo Alto Planning Department, Architectural Review Board, Historical Review Board and many neighbors and permanently deny the developer’s poorly designed plan. This proposed building is a massive fourstory, cold cement block patterned after the city garage and office complex at 102 University Ave. The proposed design is not pedestrian friendly, which should be a priority since it is prominently located in a public shopping area. It removes the existing pattern of shelter, awnings and alcoves, which are comforting in rainy weather and replaces them with an immense flat wall. The proposed building
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does not enhance the surrounding historical neighborhood. The largest proportion of the building is dedicated to office space, which will most likely subject the rest of us to the associated traffic congestion created by new daily roundtrip commuters using the space. The proposal also includes demolishing four Birge Clark buildings on the site, including those once occupied by the Shady Lane gift store and Design Within Reach showroom. Municipal Code specifies that a proposed new building must be appropriate in size, scale, mass and transition to its neighbors. The Council passed a motion stating that the developer must consider all sides of the building in its design, including Kipling Street and the alleyway behind the building. The Downtown Development Guidelines also encourage the responsible development of new businesses that open onto alleyways. This proposal inhibits that goal. Kipling Street is a quaint street lined by historic one- and two-story Victorian homes and beautiful gardens. Kipling Street also is the narrowest street in downtown Palo Alto — nearly half the width of Bryant or Waverley streets. Yet, the developer is trying to build a multi-use project that would overwhelm the existing Victorians with the same tall and massive buildings permitted on El Camino Real. The alley adjoining Kipling Street
Melbourne is a recent example that we can learn from. It’s in the process of grade separating 50 street-level crossings. Some of them have been trenched, but elevated rail is also used. As part of their process, Australia’s national research council commissioned university researchers to lead a project to “deepen understanding of the issues involved in level-crossing removals so that when proposals for specific locations are considered, professional, government and industry stakeholders as well as the community can participate in a more informed way” (see the report at bit.ly/2SFgJbB). We have a community of great universities, urban design experts, engineers and most importantly, educated and interested residents. We all need more education. Some may remember the famous fight for a solution at Devil’s Slide on the San Mateo coast. Caltrans was moving towards a more environmentally destructive highway bypass. One major problem was that Caltrans had not built any tunnels in half a century and was adamantly opposing it. It took a vote of the people to push this decision towards twin single-lane tunnels through the hills. So far, Menlo Park has made a decision for now to “do nothing” at three roads by keeping them open and at grade level and to pursue grade separation at Ravenswood. Mountain View is moving towards closing Castro Street. I believe both cities would welcome more and better choices. The ideal approach is a corridor-wide one, rather than leaving the issue to each city to struggle with. Caltrain is developing a business plan, posted at caltrain2040.org, with scenarios and policy implications for growth out to the year 2040. It mentions a possible corridor-wide approach to address at-grade separations, but coming to a regional consensus, financing and implementation will take much work.
Palo Alto’s Comprehensive Plan, just updated last year, prioritizes the need for grade crossings but has only one specific policy: T3.16, “Keep existing at-grade rail crossings open to motor vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists, consistent with results of a focused circulation study and a context-sensitive alternatives analysis.” It is clear, however, that the transportation priority is “providing more options and more convenience so that people will more readily choose not to drive.” We know by now that we don’t want a network of expressways connecting our neighborhoods and business centers. Indeed, our newer residents may not know there were real plans to make Sand Hill Road, Alameda de las Pulgas and others part of an efficient regional expressway system to allow us to zoom pleasantly between home and work. We found that the single-occupancy-vehicle model doesn’t scale well for high density, or even medium density, cities — or for our planet. We need a balance, allowing the longer commute trips to be by transit or shared rides and local trips such as to schools, transit centers and shopping to be by a mix of biking, low-speed car trips, local shuttles or walking. One important goal should be to do no harm to the relatively walkable street grids we have. As the Comprehensive Plan already provides, let’s not close streets unless there is no reasonable alternative. And let’s call upon the best of our town’s design expertise to more seamlessly integrate rail and community. We need to more carefully analyze our alternatives. Examples of good design can be found around the world that might better preserve the network of walkable streets that has kept our city livable for over a century. Q Yoriko Kishimoto is Ward 2 director, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District and former mayor of Palo Alto. She can be reached at yoriko12330@ icloud.com.
serves as an entrance for several businesses. This proposed building would swallow up its neighbors and convert the alley into a busy garage ramp. The developer has tried to publicly spin this megacomplex as a step toward creating needed housing in Palo Alto. In her appeal letter to the City Council, the developer states that the denial of her project is a violation of the California Housing and Accountability Act (CHAA). She has tried to intimidate the City with the threat of an expensive lawsuit for denying her the right to build three luxury apartments. However, the CHAA only applies to “very low-, low- and moderate-income households,” which this project is not. The CHAA only pertains to developments where “at least two-thirds” is designated as housing. Finally, this proposal also violates the City Council motion of Feb. 6, 2017, which specified that the final approved plan must “match” that which was originally submitted and approved by the Council. The developer has not met those conditions because she changed her plans. The developer has enlarged the size of the offices on the fourth floor by an additional 16 percent from the original plans. The groundfloor retail space also has been reduced. The height and massing created by the existence of a fourth floor is one of the most contentious and opposed aspects of this entire project because it will tower over its one-story neighbors. The Planning Director cites in his denial letter the developer’s “refusal” to comply with details to assure approval. In thumbing her nose at the city official who is entrusted with enforcing Palo Alto’s municipal building
code, the developer has demonstrated a contempt for rules. She also has attempted to whittle down the Architectural Review Board so that she can control the outcome. She accused one ARB member, Wynne Furth, of bias, which ultimately led Furth to recuse herself to avoid any conflict. (Prior to joining the board, Furth had written a letter as a private citizen supporting a project appeal.) She then hired and quickly terminated Peter Baltay, an architect on the ARB, thereby requiring him to also recuse himself. Of the three remaining members on the ARB, she has now accused Robert Gooyer of bias because he voted against the plan and Osma Thompson of being too new to be able to adequately participate. The only person whom she hasn’t publicly challenged is the sole ARB member who voted in favor of her project. During this process, we also have seen the developer’s family make a $5,000 political contribution to one specific council member, Greg Tanaka. When confronted, he returned the donation just before voting in favor of the developer’s project. Tanaka was ultimately fined by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for violations of the state’s Political Reform Act because he failed to properly disclose contributions from some of Palo Alto’s other top developers. This activity has shaken the trust we have in city government. Enough is enough. The citizens of Palo Alto deserve better. The proposal should be turned down without any additional extension. Q Palo Alto resident Michael Harbour is a specialist in HIV/AIDS Medicine and Public Health who practices at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. He can be emailed at mjharbour@comcast.net.
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 15
Lydia (Perlman) Pugliese October 23, 1942 – November 25, 2018 Lydia (Perlman) Pugliese passed away on November 25, 2018 following a 3-year battle with cancer. A small gathering of family and friends was held at Alta Mesa Memorial Gardens in Palo Alto, CA. A native Portlander and graduate of Lincoln High School, Lydia moved to California in 1960, and graduated from the University of California Berkeley, with a Masters in education. She taught in pubic and private high schools throughout the Bay Area in various subjects such as History, French, Spanish, and English as a Second Language. Lydia was active in the San Francisco Bay Area community, volunteering her time and energy to the Foothill Commission, the Association for Senior Day Health (ASDH), the Palo Alto Woman’s Club. As a resident of San Francisco, she continued her service in the San Francisco Historical Society, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Metropolitan Club San Francisco, and the Russian Hill Neighbors Architectural Committee. Lydia is survived by her husband of 49 years, Tony, two children, Laura and Aaron, and two granddaughters. PAID
OBITUARY
Laurie Behrens Vavuris December 9, 1930 – December 7, 2018 Laurie Behrens Vavuris was born December 9th 1930 to George and Ethel Baker Behrens in Alameda California. Laurie passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, on December 7, 2018. She was predeceased by her husband of 60 years, Paul Vavuris, in 2011. A Palo Alto resident since 1948, Laurie attended Burlingame High School, San Jose State and Salinger School of Design in San Francisco before marrying Paul and starting a family. Laurie is survived by her sons, Joe, Martin, Rob and Ken Vavuris and daughters, Katy Guernsey, Marjorie Khosrovi, Ruth Duterte, Jeanette Scott and Irene Halderman, all their caring spouses, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Laurie is also survived by her sister, Barbara (Richard) Drechsler of Clinton, Md. In 1955, when women were encouraged to bottle feed their babies, Laurie joined four other women to found the Nursing Mother’s Council, and supported many new mothers and babies during the following years. In 1979 she was a member of the interfaith committee that opened the South Palo Alto Food Closet, which continues to serve local families today. She was retired from the Santa Clara County Office of Special Education. Donations in her memory may be made to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul Conference (c/o St. Thomas Aquinas Parish Center). There will be a funeral Mass and reception at Our Lady of the Rosary Church 3233 Cowper Street Palo Alto on Tuesday, December 18, 2018 at 11:30 am. Internment will take place at a later date at the Mission Santa Clara Cemetery. PAID
OBITUARY
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Transitions Births, marriages and deaths
Michael Lee Barry
Michael Lee Barry, resident of Palo Alto for over 30 years, died on Nov. 22 at age 83. He was born in Helena, Montana and spent most of his childhood in Denver, Colorado, where he once again resided at the time of his death. He received his bachelor’s degree from Colorado School of
Mines in Golden, Colorado, and afterward received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. He married Gwendolyn Barry in 1961, and they had two daughters together. He moved to Palo Alto in 1968, and had a long career in the semiconductor industry, participating in the
Dr. Clarke Edward Schiller September 19, 1932 – December 4, 2018 Palo Alto, California After four months in the Vi of Palo Alto Skilled Nursing Facility, Clarke, 86, passed away leaving his wife of sixty years, June Fisher Schiller, two sons, Clarke Edward Schiller II (Chip) and wife Laura, Gregory Brett Schiller (Brett) and wife Brooke; two grandchildren, Cate and Wilson Schiller and two sisters-in-law, Betty Fisher Bowers and husband John and Barbara Fisher Schlosser. Born on a farm near Junction City, Kansas to Frank and Cora Schiller, he attended first through eighth grade at Kansas Falls one-room school as the only student in his class. After graduating from Junction City High School in 1950, Clarke attended Kansas State University where he earned a B.S. in physical and biological science followed by a M.S. in school administration/school planning. While in college, he was a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity and the Air Force ROTC. Following college, Clarke served as an officer in the 39th Bomb Squadron in the 6th Bomb Wing stationed at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico where he met his future wife, June Fisher. They were married in 1958. After resigning from the Air Force, Clarke began a career in education, first teaching science in Junction City Junior High School. Then as Principal, he opened two different elementary schools on Fort Riley Army Post--Jefferson and Custer Hill. In 1965 he enrolled in graduate school at Stanford University to complete a Doctorate in School Administration/School Planning. Later Clarke served as Principal of Silvendale Middle School in Franklin McKinley School District and Montgomery Elementary in Evergreen School District in San Jose, California. He retired at age 70 as Director of Planning in Evergreen. His many activities included: President of the Junction City Teacher’s Association; President of the Junction City Jaycees who built a public golf course under his leadership; President of Junction City Knife and Fork Club; Co-President of PTA of Garland School in Palo Alto; Coach, Manager, and President of Palo Alto Little League, 48 year member of Elks Club, member SIRS #35, and a 53 year supporter of many Stanford sports and of the Stanford Buck Club. With his greatest love, his family, he traveled once a year for the last seventeen years to a various locals including Alaska, Hawaii, San Juan Island, etc. After retirement, Clarke and his wife traveled often to Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and extensively in the U.S. including several times a year to their farm in Kansas, where he was born. In May his family will celebrate Clarke’s life with family and friends with a tailgate party under the Schiller Oak Tree in Lot 2 at Stanford, where for more than 40 years, for each home football game, he came early to save the space and orchestrate the tailgate party. In lieu of flowers the family prefers donations to the Stanford Children’s Hospital Auxiliary Endowment Fund, 400 Hamilton Ave, Suite 340, Palo Alto, CA 94301 PAID OBITUARY
early days of a t e ch nolog ydriven Silicon Valley. Upon his divorce from his first wife, he was married twice more, including to Claudia Richardson Hill. The two were married in 2005, the same year that he returned to Denver where he spent the rest of his life. He is survived by his wife, Claudia Richardson Hill of Denver, Colorado; his daughters, Alexandra Barry of Los Altos; and Sally Barry of Oakland; and his three grandchildren. A private service will be held for family.
Sidney Simon
Sid Simon, a longtime resident of Palo Alto, died at his home on Oct. 26 at the age of 101. He resided in the city for over 60 years. He was born in Detroit in Ma rch 26, 1917. When he was 2 years old, he moved to Los Angeles and later to Berkeley. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked as a chemist at the Mare Island Navy Base. During a gathering in Berkeley in 1943, he met his future wife Naomi Sparrow. They got married two weeks after their first date and had a 55-year marriage until she died in 1998. When they settled in Palo Alto in 1954, he took a job as a paint chemist at Benjamin Moore. He enjoyed playing tennis starting at a young age. He was in the 100 mile lap swim club at Eichler Swim & Tennis Club and opened a retail tennis store in Midtown Palo Alto. After closing the shop he participated in many local activities including water aerobics at the YMCA, a book club, Torah study and a recorder playing group. He had taught himself how to play the recorder and was a member of the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra where he earned an honorary lifetime membership after participating for more than 50 years. He is survived by his daughter Laurie Miller of El Cerrito; son Jeffrey Simon of Hayden, Colorado; grandsons; great-grandsons; and great granddaughter. A memorial service will be held at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills on Dec. 22, 5 p.m. Those attending must reply on celebratesid.com to confirm attendance.
BY ELENA KADVANY century ago, on Dec. 24, 1918, an ebullient crowd of students, teachers, elected officials and a bugle corp — the 91st Company of High School Cadets — marched from what is now Channing House on Webster Street to a new school campus on Embarcadero Road. They lined up outside the Tower Building for a photo to commemorate the first day of school at the new Palo Alto High School. This month marks Paly’s 100th year at the Embarcadero Road campus: 100 years of Spirit Weeks, homecoming dances, championship games, student activism, graduation ceremonies and lifelong ties formed at the school. Many Paly Vikings have returned to their alma mater in some form, whether as a teacher or parent, and
others credit the school with inspiring successful careers in art, politics, civic service and education, among other fields. To celebrate the school campus’s centennial year, the Palo Alto Weekly interviewed alumni, or family members of alumni, to represent each decade of the school’s history, from the female founder of student newspaper The Campanile to multi-generation Paly families with children still enrolled. Collectively, they witnessed Paly’s evolution. They saw the school’s student population grow and shrink, from about 600 students in 1928, according to newspaper articles, to more than 2,000 students today. In its history, the school alternated between enrolling three and four grades; freshmen moved to what was then the new David Starr Jordan Middle
Courtesy Lolly Osborne
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Top: Palo Alto High School seniors, clad in camouflage, gather in Viking Stadium in October 2016 for an after-school rally before the Homecoming game. Photo by Veronica Weber. Bottom: In June 1958, Paly held its “Senior Party” dance in the gym.
School when it opened in 1938, according to a Palo Alto Times article. The Vikings — now synonymous with Paly, athletics and school spirit — became the school mascot in the 1929-30 school year, according to librarian Rachel Kellerman. “We have taken their name to signify the spirit and fight which can be found in Paly High,” student-reporters from The Campanile wrote in an editorial toward the end of that year. School colors also changed in the 1930s, from green and red (chosen to honor the green leaves and red bark of the local Madrono) to green and white for a “fresher look,” Kellerman said. Students of the current century saw drastic physical changes as the historic campus modernized, with aging facilities
ne of Paly’s earliest graduates was a groundbreaking female journalist. Dorothy Nichols, who graduated in 1919, founded student newspaper The Campanile and went on to become a drama and music critic for the now-defunct Palo Alto Times. During Nichols’ senior year, she decided to create a newspaper “by and for the students of the Palo Alto Union High School,” as stated in the school’s 1919 yearbook, according to a March story in The Campanile’s centennial issue. The Campanile charged students a $1 annual subscription and did not mince words in its advertisements. “360 students, 150 subscribers — what are the other 210 of you going to do about it?” notices at the time stated, according to The Campanile. Nichols also showed a flair for fiction, penning a story called
replaced by new classrooms and stateof-the-art media, performing arts and athletic centers. While the school has transformed over the past century, many traditions and experiences persist — perhaps, most fervently, the belief in Paly as a widely recognized symbol of high-quality public education. Arne Lim, a member of the class of 1980 and a Paly math teacher, identifies the Tower Building as an iconic image of education in Palo Alto. “If that is the face of education in Palo Alto, then we have to do our best to continue that and to foster it in the current students so that they can foster (it) in the generations to come after that,” Lim said. “That’s how (Paly) has really stood the test of time.”
“The Headless Baron,” published in the Paly Madrono in May 1918. Her nephew, Alan Nichols, knew his aunt simply as “Dot.” He Dorothy Nichols observed firsthand the fruits of her early journalistic efforts. In her role as Palo Alto Times critic, he remembers her attending concerts, getting home at 10 or 11 p.m. to write her stories and then seeing them published in the paper in the morning. She covered the arts and music near and far, including the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, he said. “My impression, being a kid, she was an important person in Palo Alto — in the arts, as this
reporter,” her nephew said. “She knew a lot of people.” In addition to his Aunt Dot, her two brothers — Alan’s father and uncle — also graduated from Paly, the children of the school’s first principal, Walter Nichols. Alan was named for that uncle, a World War I hero who was killed after his plane was shot down. (Letters his uncle wrote to family and friends were published in the Palo Alto Times at the time and later compiled and published in a book, “Letters Home.”) Alan credits his aunt and other family members for a strong lineage of writing, community service and education that led him to later become an author and serve on the boards of the San Francisco Unified School District and City College of San Francisco. “Palo Alto is kind of like the fountain of inspiration, unconsciously,” he said. Q
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 17
Courtesy Jerry Tinney
Courtesy Palo Alto Historical Association
A page in a Tinney family history book is devoted to Ray Tinney, a Paly graduate and football player.
The Palo Alto High School campus, photographed in 1927, was surrounded by undeveloped land.
1920s: Ray Tinney (through son Jerry Tinney)
1940s: Irene Mock (through daughter Kimberly Wong)
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ay Tinney’s presence loomed large at Paly for his son, Jerry. Ray Tinney, who graduated in 1923, played on legendary coach Hod Ray’s first football team and later became an assistant coach at Paly. Ray Tinney died in 1947 of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Jerry Tinney was 13 years old at the time. Ray Tinney’s friends created a citizenship award in his honor, bestowed annually upon Paly seniors who showed “dependability, punctuality, regularity, ability to stick to a sometimes drudging routine, respect for another’s property, and consideration of others’ rights,” according to a Palo Alto Historical Association newsletter. Jerry Tinney followed in his father’s footsteps, playing football for Hod Ray in the revered coach’s later years. Both father and son
contributed to championship seasons — Ray Tinney was on Hod Ray’s firstever championship team and Jerry on his penultimate season in 1950, when Jerry Tinney Paly football went undefeated. Hod Ray stayed in touch with Ray Tinney after Tinney graduated from Paly, sending handwritten letters while Tinney was at college, and was one of Tinney’s pallbearers when he died. “I felt close to Hod Ray, too, because of dad’s association with him,” Jerry Tinney said of the man for whom the school’s football field is named. Jerry Tinney recalled going to Paly after school as a young boy,
when his father was a coach, hanging out at football practices and getting to know the high school players. “It was a big thing for me,” he said. “I was very much wanting to go to Paly” — and to play football. Jerry Tinney went on to play tackle for Paly football. Many of his teammates’ fathers had played with his own father. Football and school spirit were a prominent part of Palo Alto life at the time, he said. He recalled The Little Big Game, a tradition Hod Ray started in 1945 to have Paly play rival Sequoia High School at Stanford Stadium on Thanksgiving Day. People who had graduated were home for the holidays and would come to cheer the team on, Jerry Tinney said. Then, he said, Paly still felt like the “small-town school” that his father had attended. Q
1930s: Riyo Sato (through niece Pam Hashimoto)
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made it more difficult for the children of the immigrants to assimilate and feel a part of the wider community,” she said. “They were American durRiyo Sato ing the day when they were in school, but Japanese when they returned home. They lived in two worlds.” Paly, though, “opened up” Sato’s world, Hashimoto said. Sato became active in the school’s hiking club (sparking a lifelong love of health, exercise and exploring) and took art classes. A Paly art teacher, Stella McKee, encouraged Sato to apply to college to pursue her passion at a time when “it was unusual for young women, particularly minority women, to enter college, as opportunities and family funds were limited,” Hashimoto said. McKee was a mentor and “unflagging source of support” for Sato at Paly, her niece said. Much later, when Hashimoto asked her aunt what was the saddest moment of her life, Sato said it was when she learned that McKee had died.
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In 1931, the year Sato graduated from Paly, she won a $150 scholarship from the Palo Alto Business and Professional Women’s Club and used the funds to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland (now California College of the Arts). She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1940 and launched a 30-year career as an art teacher, her niece said. During World War II, Sato and her family were sent to Japanese internment camps, where she taught art classes and did her own sketches that would later be displayed at museums. A watercolor painting of hers, titled “Good Old Summertime” — a bucolic image of a camp site or trailer park with a large tree and laundry floating in the breeze on a clothesline — was also exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and other work is included in the collections at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. A bulletin from the Aldersgate United Methodist Church (the later iteration of the church Sato attended) quotes Sato as expressing gratitude for the $150 scholarship that allowed her entry to college: “That’s how I made a better life for myself,” she said. Q
purchasing homes and starting businesses in Palo Alto, even after the Chinese Exclusion Act was lifted in 1943. After Paly, Mock went to the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and then pursued a career as a graphic illustrator. Later in life, she studied watercolor techniques — inspiring Wong to do the same at the Pacific Art League years later. (Wong’s daughter, a Paly senior, also follows in her grandmother’s footsteps as a sketch artist.) Mock lived long enough to attend a farewell celebration for the 85-year-old Paly gym with her daughter in 2014. She died in 2016 — the last of her siblings to pass away. As a Paly student, Wong also gravitated toward the arts and played badminton. She described herself as a quiet, observing student. “I just buckled down and just did my thing,” she said. “My favorite memories were hanging out on the grass having lunch, soaking in the sun and rushing in to do last-minute homework assignments.” The Paly of Wong’s era was more fun and less stressful than her children’s, she said: While she took Advanced Placement classes and thought about college, the pressure to succeed wasn’t nearly as intense. Q
From left to right, Kimberley Wong, left, Paly Class of ‘84, shows Margaret (Barret) Mertens, ‘42, and Nadine (Brown) Jefferson, ‘68, photographs of her mother, Irene (Mock) Wong, who attended Paly with Mertens. The women were at a march in October commemorating the school’s centennial.
Veronica Weber
aly “represented opportunity and freedom” for Riyo Sato, said her niece Pam Hashimoto. Born and raised in Palo Alto by Japanese immigrants, Sato discovered passions at Paly that would shape the course of her life, her niece said. Her father came to America around 1900 and then sent for her mother and older brother, who was 11 years old at the time, Hashimoto said. Sato’s mother died when she was 14 years old, thrusting her into the role of supporting the family by working at her parents’ grocery store and boarding house. Sato was one of five children in her extended family who graduated from Paly (including step-brother Fred Yamamoto, a World War II hero whose name in 2018 was proposed, controversially, as a new name for a Palo Alto middle school). With the Depression raging and resentment of Japanese people growing on the West Coast, the Japanese community Sato was part of in Palo Alto was isolated, Hashimoto said. “This promoted a sense of support and self-sufficiency among the Japanese community, but
he Mock-Wong family includes three generations of Paly graduates. Joe Mock was first, followed by siblings James, Mary, Frank, Charles, Irene and Rose. Irene, who graduated in 1943, had a daughter, Kimberly Wong, who graduated in 1984. Wong’s two children also attended Paly, with her youngest daughter graduating in this centennial year. All of the Mock children were born in Palo Alto in a home at the corner of Homer Avenue and Ramona Street, Wong said. They were delivered by Edith Johnson, Palo Alto’s first female doctor. Paly of the 1940s for Mock, she told her daughter, was about basketball games, school dances at Lucie Stern Community Center (including one for which she created “Under the Sea” themed decorations), art class and riding their bikes around town. Her brother Frank, the tallest of the family, played basketball for Paly. Mock recalled to her daughter cherished memories cheering him and friends on at games and traveling as far away as Fresno to watch them play. “They just had a lot of fun,” Wong said. Her mother, a second-generation Chinese-American, never spoke about being discriminated against, Wong said, but her uncles said they faced difficulty
1950s: Judy Mack
1960s: Ron Wyden
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udy Mack describes 1950sera Paly as reminiscent of “Leave it to Beaver,” the TV sitcom about wholesome, American suburbia at that time. She graduated in 1957, when students still took classes like Latin and stenography. Teachers dressed formally and seemed like college professors, she recalled. Hall monitors kept order in Paly’s hallways. Outside of school, teenagers walked everywhere, with little parental monitoring. Students went to sock hop dances and watched films at a movie theater on California Avenue. “We had, really, delicious freedom,” Mack said. Mack was destined to attend Paly, in a sense: Her parents had met there. Though, for their time, marrying a high school sweetheart was common, Mack said. She knew at least three other couples who grew up in Palo Alto, went to Paly and got married. Mack’s father would reminisce about teachers he had who were still at Paly, she said. When he dropped her off at school, he’d point with reverence to the field named after Hod Ray, who had been his coach. Her father had a block “P” for his letterman jacket, Mack recently re-discovered while going through family heirlooms. He earned it for being not just an athlete but also a dutiful hall monitor, she said. Mack “adored” her own teachers and thoroughly enjoyed her high school experience. “I loved it there at that time, and I’ve had a lot of affection for it since,” she said. She wrote for The Campanile, which became a central force in her young life. She conducted interviews at lunch and stayed late Thursday nights to put the paper to bed. Mack received a prize for her reporting on the school board her senior year, winning an all-expenses-paid trip to Detroit funded by Ford Motor Company. She traveled there with reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle and had to write a story from a youth perspective on cars of 1957. She chafed against expectations for young women at the time, calling her parents in to confront a school counselor who urged her to take stenography as a career path. “My father explained that it wasn’t necessary and that I would stay on the college track and ‘Thank you for your consideration, but she’s not taking stenography,’” Mack recalled. “My mother had not gone to college, so she would have been happy with whatever. My father had really always supported my academic interests.” Mack eventually married, moved away and had a daughter. Mack’s granddaughter was later raised in Palo Alto and graduated from Paly. Mack is still in touch with her Paly classmates through an email group led by her class president and attends yearly in-person reunions in Palo Alto. “I have come to think that maybe I just made up this ‘Leave it to Beaver’ life and that it really wasn’t the way I thought. But if I did that, then all my classmates did that,” Mack said. Q
on Wyden practically “dribbled his way” through Palo Alto High
School. He played basketball for famed coach Clem Wiser and dreamed of going professional after high school. Wiser won more games than any other Paly basketball coach and was named California Coaches Association basketball Coach of Year in 1983. “He was really the gold standard in terms of what you’d want of a teacher and a coach and a role model,” said Wyden, class of 1967. “You’d sit on the bench ... but he’d see everything. He had eyes in the back of his head.” Wiser took time to get to know his players off the court, Wyden said. He knew Wyden’s parents were divorced and would frequently check in with him. He knew Wyden’s Saturday hangout spot was the Peninsula Creamery. Wyden gave a personal tribute to Wiser in October when Paly dedicated a monument to the late coach
as part of the centennial celebrations. The monument was funded entirely by donations from former players, coaching colleagues and local community members. Wyden played on Wiser’s 1967 varsity basketball team, which finished with a record of 27-2. The team won the South Peninsula Athletic League championship game, ranking them second in the entire state. Wyden remembered vividly the championship game that year against Sequoia, which drew “the biggest crowd ever for a basketball game at Paly,” he said. “They basically had to lock the doors.” The game went into overtime before Paly won 70-68. Wyden’s teenage athletic aspirations were set against a more somber backdrop, however: the Vietnam War. Paly students feared they would be drafted, he said. “It was a time when you had a lot of fun with sports, with friends. You had dreams, like mine to play in the NBA, that bumped up into the reality of what would happen if you were
Veronica Weber
Cover Story
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, right, Paly Class of ‘67, participates in a march commemorating the school’s 100th anniversary on Oct. 7, 2018. drafted,” Wyden recalled. Race relations were also tense and ever-present, he said. His senior year, when they played away games against the Ravenswood school district basketball team, instead of changing at the East Palo Alto gym — as they would for any other away game — they got dressed at the Paly gym, took a bus to East Palo Alto and quickly returned when the game was over. There was a fear, Wyden said, that racial tensions could erupt in some way.
“We were very much aware that in this wonderful community, the backdoor of Stanford University, a premier institution, when Palo Alto High School played primarily African-American kids, we couldn’t dress there like we could everywhere else,” he said. Wyden didn’t end up playing in the NBA but found a career in politics. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 until 1996. That year, he was elected Oregon’s state senator, a position he holds today. Q
1970s: the Brown family
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alo Alto High School is, arguably, in the Brown family’s blood. From 1942 through 2018, more than 15 members of the family attended Paly and several had strong ties to Viking athletics. Fred Brown, born and raised in Palo Alto, was the first to graduate from Paly. His five children followed in his footsteps, including his youngest, Jimmy Brown, a star basketball player who graduated in 1975. When Jimmy Brown attended Paly, the school was 10th through 12th grade. (He attended ninth grade at what was then Jordan Middle School.) Basketball was central to Brown’s Paly experience. He described himself as an unmotivated student who preferred hanging out in the parking lot to attending classes, but the eligibility requirements and dreams of playing at the collegiate level pushed him to keep his grades up. He played for
coach Clem Wiser and received several scholarship offers from colleges, though he ultimately attended San Bruno community college Skyline College. He recalled one memorable win over rival Gunn High School when they came back from a nearly 20-point deficit. After games, you’d find him celebrating at the Peninsula Creamery in downtown Palo Alto. As an athlete and a Brown, he said he was well-known on campus — and enjoyed that social status. His brother also played basketball and his father was a Paly baseball coach. Through Little League baseball and high school sports, he made friends beyond Paly at Gunn and Cubberley High School. “We were a well known family, especially with sports,” Brown said. His nephew David Jefferson and son Steven went on to play on the basketball teams that won the state championship in 1993 and 2006,
1980s: Arne Lim
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rne Lim entered Palo Alto High School a bit reluctantly. He was forced to transfer there for his senior year after Cubberley High School in south Palo Alto closed in 1980. His group of friends was broken up; some went to Paly while others were assigned to Gunn High School. He went from a relatively small class at Cubberley — about 240 students — to more than 500 students at Paly. “Honestly it was a bit bitter for many of us,” he said. “We just kind of wanted to finish school.” But that one year at Paly left a lasting mark on Lim so strong that he returned years later for his first-ever teaching job. He’s taught math at Paly ever since. Lim, born and raised in Palo Alto, said he was always a good student and did well academically at Paly. He played badminton and also joined orchestra mid-year. The teacher,
Angela Brown
John Brown
respectively — eternal “bragging rights” at family get-togethers, Brown said. Despite his family’s deep roots in Palo Alto, Brown, who is African-American, said he faced racism as a teenager, mostly outside of school. During lunchtime trips to John’s Market at Town & Country Village, he said the market staff would follow him and other African-American Paly students around the store, he believed to make sure they wouldn’t steal anything. He said he repeatedly experienced racial profiling from police officers in Palo Alto. But campus was a safe space where many teachers, he said, made a concerted effort to
Michael Britt, took him under his wing. “As I reflect upon that time, I realized how much I really needed that class. I’d stop short of saying he (Britt) saved me, but he created a place, a community for me, the outlier, the one coming from Cubberley over to Arne Lim Paly,” said Lim, who still keeps in touch with Britt. Lim liked all his teachers, and wrote each of them a note when he returned as a teacher in 1985 to let them know he was back on campus. At Paly, he’s also coached the badminton team and served as a teacher-adviser and instructional leader for the math department. The Palo Alto of his teenage years was progressive and family- and youth-friendly, Lim said. There were three bowling alleys at the time; he lamented their eventual demise as a sign of changing times and fewer
David Brown
Nadine Brown
engage him in their classes. The extended Brown family remains a presence at Paly. Basketball photographs of Jefferson and Brown’s older brother hang in the hallway of the Tower Building. Two of Brown’s children returned to work at Paly: his son Steven as the varsity basketball assistant coach and Christa Brown as a secretary in the attendance office. David Jefferson’s mother, Nadine Jefferson, also works in the Paly special-education department’s testing center. Brown’s granddaughter graduated from Paly in June and her younger brother is expected to attend when he reaches highschool age. Q
community resources for teenagers. Paly itself has changed drastically since he was a student. He deals daily with students using smartphones during class and strikes a difficult balance between restriction of technology and its educational benefits. Paly has transformed physically, with new buildings across campus. He worries about the standard that might set for students who become accustomed to the quality of their school’s facilities. “The idea of what is normal has changed a lot,” Lim said. But what has persisted since Lim’s high school days is a lasting association between Palo Alto and excellent public schools. Paly, with its 100-year foundation, still draws families from all over the country and world to Palo Alto. “For all the quote-unquote progress that’s going on, we don’t want to forget from where we came,” he said. Q (continued on page 22)
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Cover Story
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ellan Hori was raised in the classrooms and hallways of Palo Alto High School. Both his parents, Lynn and Bruce Hori, taught in the science department. Once he himself arrived as a student, their presence was a mixed bag, he said. There were academic benefits — getting the class schedule he wanted and an increased familiarity with teachers and staff that made him confident in asking for help on assignments, he said — but socially, being a teenager and having all your classmates know your parents “wasn’t the greatest thing, especially during your formative years,” Hori said. He had to balance his parents’ presence with trying to fit in socially (including trying to convince friends that his parents wouldn’t know if they were out late or doing something unsavory). But much of Hori’s time was consumed by athletics. He was a
three-sport athlete — wrestling, water polo and swimming — until his junior and senior years, when he focused on the latter two. (He went on to play water polo in college.) He has countless memories of athletics at Paly, “from morning workouts when it was 30 degrees outside to winning CCS to losing CCS.” Hori, who is now a private chef, also did jazz band, student government and Boy Scouts — he was the “typical overcommitted teenager,” Hori said. If 1950s Paly was “Leave it to Beaver,” Hori’s era was “Dazed and Confused,” Hori said. There were school pranks and streakers. “I went to school pre-internet, pre-email, pre-cell phones. We had pagers. It was still holding on to a lot of the older culture of high school and the high school pranks,” Hori said. Hori graduated in 1999, just months after a shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado
left 12 students and one teacher dead. He remembers classes being given over to open discussions to let students express how they felt. The shoot- Kellan Hori ing shocked him and other students who saw the similarities between Paly’s and Columbine’s demographics (mostly white and affluent), location (affluent suburbs) and relative size. Some of his class graduation speeches referenced Columbine. “Looking back on it, now school shootings are so rampant. ... I do remember it being a really huge deal across campus,” Hori said. Hori’s mother retired — she prefers “graduated” — in 2011 and his father in 2004, after 73 combined years of teaching at Paly. Q
Early 2000s: Laura Martinez
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aura Martinez was the first in her family to attend and graduate college. She credits a supportive environment at Paly in part for that milestone. Martinez, who graduated Paly in 2002, grew up in East Palo Alto and attended Palo Alto Unified schools through the Voluntary Transfer Program, or Tinsley program. She described her teachers, advisors and others at Paly as warm, welcoming and devoted to helping her. “Coming to school in a community where I didn’t live, being one of the few Latina students in all of my classes — I encountered so many supportive individuals,” she said. She recalled a favorite teacher, Kevin Duffy (who still teaches there), who brought levity into the classroom and was a presence throughout campus, including as a chaperone at dances. “I think we connected over — I grew up speaking Spanish, but I knew that I wanted to master it and use my Spanish language for jobs after graduating college, which I have done,” Martinez said. “It just made it a lot of fun to be in his classes.” (She went on to major in Spanish in college.) An English class focused on
Veronica Weber
Palo Alto High School alumna Laura Martinez, Paly Class of 2002, sits outside the tower building on Dec. 4. writers of color also left an impression on her. They read MexicanAmerican author Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” about a Latina teenager living in a Puerto Rican neighborhood of Chicago. That book and class marked “a turning point for me and just learning more about myself in a way,” Martinez said. She made good use of Paly’s college and career center, which she said had a partnership with East Palo Alto nonprofit Foundation for a College Education (FCE), which helps students of color attend and graduate from college. “With the school and FCE and my parents, I really had a good support system,” Martinez said. “If it wasn’t for all three of those pieces working together, I may not be here.” Martinez recalled fondly dressing up for Spirit Week, a timehonored Paly tradition, and a trip to Yosemite her freshman year as part of the Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM) cohort program. Paly was transformative for her, influencing her desire to return to her community as an adult and try to improve it.
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“Growing up in East Palo Alto and attending school in Palo Alto my whole life, I had always wondered why there were so many differences in education, the environment. I knew that I wanted to move back to the area after college and serve my community in some way,” she said. After graduating from Whittier College, she returned to work in the nonprofit sector, helped open a new YMCA in East Palo Alto and worked for Aspire East Palo Alto Charter School. In 2008, Martinez won a seat on the East Palo Alto City Council. At 23 years old, she became the youngest candidate in city history — “and at one point even the country, until someone beat me,” she said with a smile — to be elected to City Council. She became mayor at 27 years old and was re-elected to a second term. She was also appointed to the Sequoia Union High School District Board of Education to serve the remaining term of a retiring trustee in 2015. Martinez started a new job in February as assistant director of admission and tuition assistance at private all-girls Castilleja School, a short walk away from her alma mater. Being close by, she’s frequently invited back to campus to participate in events and also has the opportunity to partner with Paly. The month after Martinez started her new job, Castilleja students teamed up with peers at Paly and other local schools to participate in a nationwide gun-violence protest. Martinez walked with students from Castilleja to Paly and listened to passionate speeches calling for gun-control reform, part of a national wave of student activism sparked by the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. “I was really happy to be a part of that and experience that together,” Martinez said. Q
File photo/ Veronica Weber
1990s: Kellan Hori
Students exit the Media Arts Center, which features a digital marquee with news and announcements, shortly after it opened in 2014.
Late 2000s: Ricardo Lombera
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hen Ricardo Lombera arrived at Paly, he made it his mission to leave the school a more inclusive place for students of color than when he found it. He joined the Latinos Unidos club (now Paly LatinX club) and lobbied for having an altar on campus for Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead — the first on-campus altar for the holiday in the school’s history, he said. He gave a commencement speech this June that mixed English and Spanish, emphasizing themes of unity and diversity. Lombera was never expecting to attend Paly. He grew up in Redwood City and attended Woodside High School but an eviction forced his family to move his sophomore year. He had to quickly adjust to a sharply contrasting community: more white, more affluent, more academically rigorous. It was difficult to make friends until he joined Latinos Unidos, where he met a tight-knit group of students and eventually became president of the club. He encountered racism — some outright, some subtle, including an English teacher who after Lombera’s poor performance on a paper suggested he should drop out of school and work at McDonald’s, he said. “English is not my first language, but I really enjoyed literature. I really enjoy writing. I respect every single teacher because since I grew up my parents have told me education is the one way to get (ahead),” Lombera said. “To have someone who I really thought had the (best) intentions for me to tell me that ... that was pretty difficult for me to take.” Despite the difficulty he had adjusting to Paly, he credits the experience with inspiring a deep passion for advocacy and social justice. As president of Latinos Unidos, he was determined to have an altar for Dia de los Muertos last year but encountered pushback from an administration concerned about memorializing the dead in light of student suicide clusters in recent years. He understood the resistance but said it felt like a cultural misunderstanding that, despite good intentions, made him and other Latino students feel “less than.” The school ultimately allowed an altar only with photographs of older historical figures, so they chose Latino figures like Cesar Chavez,
Selena and Dolores Huerta. People learned a lot from it, which was really nice. That was all we wanted,” Lombera said. The week of graduation, Lombera and other members of Latinos Unidos painted a mural on Paly’s student center depicting historical figures including Cesar Chavez, Malala Yousafzai, Helen Keller, Ricardo Harvey Milk, Lombardo Ida B. Wells and Martin Luther King Jr. Their faces are surrounded by orange butterflies — the unofficial symbol of Dreamers, young people who were brought to the United States illegally as children — because, as Lombera said in his graduation speech, “Everyone deserves equal rights, no matter where they are born.” When Lombera started at Paly, he said, he was shy and passive. By the time he graduated in June, he was a confident student leader and fierce advocate for others. He marched with his classmates in a powerful demonstration of student activism after Donald Trump was elected in 2016. The first in his family to go to college, Lombera went to Connecticut College to study political science, with ambitions of attending law school. “I really learned how to speak up for myself and how to stand up for others,” Lombera said. “It was definitely something that Paly taught me and that’s definitely something that I’m grateful for.” He’s hopeful that the next 100 years of Paly will produce a school that looks and feels more diverse and inclusive. He hopes the school hires more teachers and staff of color, including in leadership roles, and instills in all members of the campus community a commitment to speaking up for others, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or identity. “It’s still got a long way to go, but I’m proud to say that I’m a Paly alum,” Lombera said. Q Staff Writer Elena Kadvany can be emailed at ekadvany@ paweekly.com. Information about Paly’s yearlong centennial celebration is posted at paly.net/centennial.
Arts & Entertainment
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A weekly guide to music, theater, art, culture, books and more, edited by Karla Kane
A ter ‘evera ter’
Los Altos Stage Company goes ‘Into the Woods’
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Story by Karla Kane | Photos by Richard Mayer
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Cinderella (Allie Townsend, center) is wooed by her Prince (Steve Allhoff), to the shock of her stepsisters (Kori Traina and Samantha Ricci), father (Stephen Howes) and stepmother (Sasha Motalygo).
The Witch (Juliet Green, left) explains a family curse to The Baker and the Baker’s Wife (David Mister and Dana Cordelia Morgan). tephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Into the Woods” has become a beloved theater staple since its debut in the 1980s and it’s understandable why. The show brings together a gaggle of archetypal fairytale characters and explores what comes after “happily ever after” in smart, funny and poignant ways and gives performers what must be an awfully fun challenge. Because it’s so popular, we get productions of the show on what seems like a regular basis, including from TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Hollywood and, in 2016, Palo Alto Players. It’s Los Altos Stage Company’s turn now, and the small-but-mighty company holds its own with a charming (no princely pun intended) version. “The Woods” in this case serve, as woods often do, as a symbol of a journey; a struggle; a transformative experience. Everyone must at some point venture through the dark woods of life. At show’s start we meet various folktale characters expressing their wishes: Cinderella (Allie Townsend) What: “Into the Woods.” Where: Bus Barn Theater, 97 Hillview Ave., Los Altos. When: Through Dec. 23. Cost: $20-$38. Info: Go to losaltosstage.org.
THEATER REVIEW wants to go to the royal festival. Jack (Stephen Kanaski) wishes his cow, Milky White (Caitie Clancey), would give milk while his mother (Judith Miller) wants to sell the animal. The Baker and his wife (David Mister and Dana Cordelia Morgan) want a child. There’s also bratty, bold Red Ridinghood (Brigitte Losey), who’s been warned not to stray from the path; two vain princes (Steve Allhoff, who also plays the Wolf, and Anthony Stephens); Cinderella’s wicked stepmother (Sasha Motalygo), stepsisters (Samantha Ricci and Kori Traina) and feckless father (Stephen Howes); Rapunzel, sheltered from the world in her tower (Jordan Kersten); the witch who cursed the Baker and trapped Rapunzel (Juliet Green); Red Ridinghood’s Granny (Melissa Jones, who also plays the spirit of Cinderella’s mother, helpful birds, a giant and another cow) and a Mysterious Man (Gary Landis, also playing the Narrator). All of them will cross paths at some point during their time in the woods. While the plot of the first act unspools humorously along standard fairy tale lines, ending with everyone seemingly making wishes come true, Act 2 shakes things up and goes much darker by showing that things aren’t always as simple
Red Ridinghood (Brigitte Losey) is pursued by the Wolf (Steve Allhoff). as they first appear. “Witches can be right. Giants can be good,” as the song goes. The princes, for instance, find they love the challenge of rescuing maidens more than the maidens themselves (and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty arrive on the scene). More distressingly, a justifiably vengeful giant is killing villagers and the characters must work together to decide how to best deal with the situation for which they all deserve at least partial blame. Sondheim is a masterful lyricist and while the second act gets a bit preachy with its repeated deliverance of moral messages, it’s a very satisfying take on fairy tale tropes (many of which have to do with the complicated relationships between parents and children). The ambivalence and ambiguity that comes with growing up and growing wiser (“Isn’t nice to know a lot? And a little bit ... not,” Red Ridinghood realizes) is brilliantly captured. Here’s where I may get my
musical-theater nerd card revoked, though, by admitting that I’ve never been a big fan of the actual music of “Into the Woods.” It’s no doubt intricate but to me it’s largely grating, though it has its moments, including “Children Will Listen” and the princes’ comical “Agony.” The whole show also goes on too long, a bit like a hike through the woods that starts fun but then ends up being a lot more strenuous than you’d hoped. The Los Altos cast (directed by Allie Bailey) is likeable, including Clancey who just about steals the show in the silent, pantomime role of Milky White, speaking volumes with just body language and facial expressions (Jones, in fact, also steals the one scene she’s in as the other cow). Allhoff and Stephens shine as the pompous princes, as do Losey and Kanaski as the children, Red Ridinghood and Jack. Morgan, who dazzled in Los Altos Stage Company’s “Distracted” earlier this year,
is excellent again as the Baker’s Wife. That’s only mentioning a few but all the performers are pretty good, other than sometimes struggling to stay in rhythm with the musical accompaniment (led by D. Asa Stern). Brett Carlson’s set design, with multiple entry points in and out of the winding woods, is attractive and costumes by Mae Matos suit the familiar characters well, although the cow suits seem rather cheaply done. Hair and makeup by Shiboune Thill made some of the performers look too obviously powdered and wigged from my seat close to the stage. Is “Into the Woods” overrated? Possibly. Overproduced? Likely so. Nevertheless, while it’s not one of my personal favorites, the show earns its lasting place in the popular-theater canon, with Los Altos Stage Company putting their own winsome touch on the clever, fanciful epic (and I’d love to see a spinoff starring those utterly endearing cows). Q Arts & Entertainment Editor Karla Kane can be emailed at kkane@paweekly.com.
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 23
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Local chefs let you ring in the season with festive cooking classes by Cameron Rebosio arl Rauch and Liza Piroska love to cook but donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like following recipes, so the two friends decided to try out a cooking class where they could follow along with a pro. Now, classes are part of their annual holiday tradition. The duo said taking culinary classes gives them time to hang out together and have fun while prepping for the holidays. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We like to entertain and have dinner parties ... it totally impresses people,â&#x20AC;? said Rauch, who lives in San Mateo. In a recent class at Draegerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cooking School in San Mateo, Rauch and Piroska sat in the back of the class sipping wine and enjoying salad and bread while learning how to make an array of chocolate desserts. During the 90-minute demonstration, chocolatier Alice Medrich showed them step by step how to make tiramisu, chocolate crepes, chocolate ice cream and chocolate sauce. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inspiring,â&#x20AC;? said Piroska, who lives in Palo Alto. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If you see it demonstrated, you learn so many techniques.â&#x20AC;? Rauch and Piroska arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t alone in turning to pros. Kitchen retailer Sur La Table, which operates 80 in-store cooking schools nationwide â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including one at Town & Country Shopping Center in Palo Alto â&#x20AC;&#x201D; has seen enrollment in its cooking classes jump to 600,000 students annually, CEO Billy May told the National Retail Federation in October. The holiday season is particularly popular. The chefs interviewed for this story said their classes tend to sell out quickly during this time of year with people interested in learning how to cook everything from their first turkey dinner to holiday breads, family meals, make-ahead holiday brunch and glutenfree baked goods. Sur La Table even offers a kids holiday cooking series. In addition to learning how to cook from in-house instructors and local celebrity chefs at professional cooking schools, students can opt to attend an
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Photo by Lindsay Penrose, courtesy of Anne Marie Bonneau
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Mountain View chef Anne-Marie Bonneau demonstrates how to make a sourdough starter during a private cooking class.
intimate class at a chefâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home or host a private cooking party at their own home. Prices typically range from $60 to $125 per person and include all supplies. Medrich, founder of the Cocolat chain of chocolate stores and a James Beard award-winning cookbook author, said some come to improve their culinary skills, others come to enjoy time together with family and friends. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an experience you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get from online cooking videos, she said. Demonstration classes at Draegerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, like the one she teaches as a guest chef, are designed for socializing, she said. Students can sit back, sample the menu, enjoy wine and learn some new cooking tricks in a relaxing and fun setting. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Teaching in person, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a wonderful exchange,â&#x20AC;? Medrich said. Maria Capdevielle, a consulting pastry chef at V. Sattui restaurant in Santa Helena, is teaching a hands-on South American holiday baking class as a guest chef at Draegerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s this season. She said learning
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Page 24 â&#x20AC;˘ December 14, 2018 â&#x20AC;˘ Palo Alto Weekly â&#x20AC;˘ www.PaloAltoOnline.com
Chocolatier Alice Medrich shows students how to make tiramisu and chocolate crepes during a holiday cooking class at Draegerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cooking School in San Mateo.
Photo by Veronica Weber
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Anne-Marie Bonneau hosts cooking classes in her Mountain View home.
“There’s no place like home.”
Eating Out to cook perfectly is not necessarily what people are looking for when they take a class. “The objective is that people enjoy their time, and they learn something that they can recreate at home,” said Capdevielle, who planned to teach students how to make Argentinian caramel sandwich cookies, Brazilian fudge candies, Brazilian cheese bread and Venezuelan stuffed bread with olives, jam and raisins. In her interactive three-hour class, students break into groups
that each prepare a portion of the menu. At the end, everyone gets to sample each group’s dishes together. “Nowadays people are a little bit disconnected. I feel that cooking is a wonderful way to connect,” she said. “Cooking together, everyone has a responsibility: You cut the onions, you do different tasks, everyone feels important and then everyone enjoys.” Mountain View chef AnneMarie Bonneau, who teaches at various cooking schools and
holds classes at residents’ homes, believes cooking is a fun way to get together with one’s friends. “My classes are like little parties ... I teach them, and they eat food, and they chat,” she said. Known as “The Zero-waste Chef,” Bonneau shows students ways to reduce their environmental footprint in the kitchen while teaching them healthy-cooking skills like how to ferment foods such kimchi, sauerkraut and kombucha. Her holiday courses focus on how to reduce food waste by
learning how to determine how much food is needed for parties and family meals and what to do with leftovers. During her classes, Bonneau provides the ingredients, as well as food for students to sample and take home. At the end of the lesson, students get to take home whatever they make. “I don’t think cooking is so difficult that you have to be too serious about it ... anyone can do it. It’s fun!” Bonneau said. Q Cameron Rebosio is a former Palo Alto Weekly intern.
HOLIDAY COOKING CLASSES HANDS-ON & DEMONSTRATION Sur La Table
Town & Country Village, Suite 57, 855 El Camino Real, Palo Alto Hands-on group sessions for up to 16 students. Participants are broken into groups of four to prepare dishes that are shared at the end of the 2-2.5-hour classes | $75 (for most holiday classes) More information: surlatable.com
Draeger’s Cooking School
1010 University Dr., Menlo Park 222 E. Fourth Ave., San Mateo Demonstration classes and hands-on classes taught by guest chefs, staff instructions ranging from industry insiders, cookbook authors and globe-traveling experts | classes range from 1.5-3 hours and include snacks,
beverages and menu tastings | $60-$125, includes all materials More information: draegerscookingschool.com
Quattro, Four Seasons Hotel
2050 University Ave., East Palo Alto Four Seasons Hotel offers private mixology classes for groups of 8-20 at its restaurant, Quattro. During the two-hour class, a bartender will teach participants how to pour, muddle and mix seasonal craft cocktails at highboy tables set up with shakers, mixers and all the needed ingredients. Hors d’oeuvres are included. | $100 per person More information: quattrorestaurant.com
PRIVATE CLASSES & HOME PARTIES Cozymeal
Personalized private hands-on cooking classes in your home (or other selected location) arranged through the company’s website, which pairs local residents to professional chefs | $100, includes all materials More information: cozymeal.com
The Zero-Waste Chef
Mountain View chef Anne-Marie Bonneau offers classes and private workshops/parties at the location of your choice. She shows students ways to reduce their environmental footprint in the kitchen while teaching them healthy-cooking skills like how to ferment food. Vegan snacks are included. | $20$90, includes materials More information: zerowastechef.com
La Toque de Cindy California Culinary Experiences
Palo Alto chef Cindy Roberts hosts private cooking-party events for kids of all ages. Her experiences are geared to instill a love for cooking and eating. She holds contests and trivia quizzes, cooking games and raffle tickets to spice up her cooking sessions. During the holidays, she teaches with guest instructors. Classes limited to 12. | $60 More information: cindytoquecooking.com
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Answers to this week’s puzzles, which can be found on page 38.
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 25
RISTORANTE 417 S. California Ave. Palo Alto
Open Christmas Eve - December 24
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A Star is Born (R) ++1/2 Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. Ben is Back (R) ++1/2 Guild Theatre: Fri.-Sun. Bohemian Rhapsody (PG13) Century 20: Fri.-Sun. ShowPlace Icon: Fri.-Sun.
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Movies
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Julia Roberts mothers a teen addict in ‘Ben is Back’ 001/2 (The Guild)
one of neurotic parenting pushed to the brink. Although Ben has taken unscheduled leave of his rehab program, the practiced manipulator has accurately predicted that his mother will not — cannot — turn him away on Christmas Eve. Ground rules are established and tested as Ben and Holly make a treacherous trip to the mall, and the family dutifully reports to church. But all is not well on the family’s return home, and the crises that begin to pile up send Ben and Holly into the night, ostensibly on a shared mission, but still at odds. During this mission, they encounter the mother of a forever-lost opioid addict who tells Holly, “You can’t save them, but you’ll hate yourself if you don’t try.” That was more or less the message of “Beautiful Boy” earlier this season, and much as that film struggled to offer more insight than addiction is the worst thing that can happen, “Ben is Back” feels thin, propped up by its performances and its latebreaking intrigues. Rated R for language throughout and some drug use. One hour, 43 minutes. — Peter Canavese
The “twilight zone” of living with a family member in the grip of addiction serves as the existential setting of “Ben is Back.” Sure, the literal setting is a rather quaint suburban New York town, made deceptively more charming by its choir-graced church and Christmas-goosed families. But the film’s titular return of a teenager to his blended family on Christmas Eve spells 24 hours of secrets and lies. Written and directed by Peter Hedges (“Dan in Real Life” ), “Ben is Back” simultaneously introduces us to Holly Burns (Oscar-winner Julia Roberts) and her prodigal son Ben Burns (Peter’s Oscar-nominated son Lucas Hedges). Ben’s sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton) immediately goes on alert upon his return, and so does Holly, but for Mom, unconditional love and desperate hope cloud her judgement. “This time will be different,” she reassures Ivy and herself. “You’ll see. It will.” Holly reveals herself to be a power mom who takes as much control as she can: Was she always this person, or did Ben make her this way? In any case, her story is
Creed II (PG-13) Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. Deadpool 2 (R) ShowPlace Icon: Fri.-Sun. Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch (2018) (PG) Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (PG-13) Century 20: Fri.-Sun. ShowPlace Icon: Fri.-Sun. The Favourite (R) Century 20: Fri.-Sun. Palo Alto Square: Fri.-Sun. Green Book (PG-13) ++1/2 Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. Instant Family (PG-13) + Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. Mary Queen of Scots (R) Aquarius Theatre: Fri.-Sun. Mortal Engines (PG-13) Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. ShowPlace Icon: Fri.-Sun. The Mule (R) Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. ShowPlace Icon: Fri.-Sun. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (PG) Century 20: Fri.-Sun. Ralph Breaks the Internet (PG) +++ Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. ShowPlace Icon: Fri.-Sun. Robin Hood (2018) (PG-13) Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. Spider-man:Into the SpiderVerse (PG) Century 16: Fri.-Sun. Century 20: Fri.-Sun. ShowPlace Icon: Fri.-Sun. Widows (R)
C R I T I C S ’ PI C K
“JULIA ROBERTS
GIVES A POWERFUL PERFORMANCE.” THE NEW YORK TIMES
“ JULIA ROBERTS AT HER BEST.”
++++ SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“JULIA ROBERTS and LUCAS HEDGES GIVE OSCAR WORTHY PERFORMANCES. ®
&# #12 } *+ & 4# 1##, ', *-,% 2'+# THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
“A TOUR DE FORCE PERFORMANCE BY JULIA ROBERTS. LUCAS HEDGES IS OUTSTANDING.” USA TODAY
“UNFORGETTABLE.” ROLLING STONE
Academy Award® Winner
Academy Award® Nominee
JULIA ROBERTS
LUCAS HEDGES
A FILM BY ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE PETER HEDGES ®
EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT
STARTS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14
Page 26 • December 14, 2018 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
CHECK DIRECTORIES FOR SHOWTIMES NO PASSES ACCEPTED
Century 20: Fri.-Sun.
+ Skip it ++ Some redeeming qualities +++ A good bet ++++ Outstanding Aquarius: 430 Emerson St., Palo Alto (For recorded listings: 327-3241) tinyurl.com/Aquariuspa Century Cinema 16: 1500 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View tinyurl.com/Century16 Century 20 Downtown: 825 Middlefield Road, Redwood City tinyurl.com/Century20 CineArts at Palo Alto Square: 3000 El Camino Real, Palo Alto (For information: 493-0128) tinyurl.com/Pasquare Guild: 949 El Camino Real, Menlo Park (For recorded listings: 566-8367) tinyurl.com/Guildmp ShowPlace Icon: 2575 California St. #601, Mountain View tinyurl.com/iconMountainView Stanford Theatre: 221 University Ave., Palo Alto (For recorded listings: 324-3700) Stanfordtheatre.org
Find trailers, star ratings and reviews on the web at PaloAltoOnline.com/ movies
Home&Real Estate
OPEN HOME GUIDE 32 Also online at PaloAltoOnline.com
A weekly guide to home, garden and real estate news, edited by Elizabeth Lorenz
Home Front SHOP AT SCHOOL ... Glass snow people, reindeer, ornaments, cups, bowls, candy canes and more decor made by students, faculty and alumni in Palo Alto High School’s Fiery Arts (glass blowing) program will be for sale Friday and Saturday. Sales will benefit the Fiery Arts program. Live demonstrations and free cookies and hot cider will be served. The sale will be Friday, Dec. 14 from 3-6 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 15 from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. inside the Paly Tower Building, 50 Embarcadero Road, in Palo Alto. For more information go to facebook.com/ PalyFieryArts.
PANTONE COLOR FOR 2019 ... The word is out: Pantone Color Institute has picked its 2019 Color of the Year: PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral is “vibrant yet mellow,” and “embraces us with warmth and nourishment to provide comfort and buoyancy in our continually shifting environment,” Pantone’s website states. For 20 years, the institute has selected a Color of the Year, which has influenced product development and purchasing decisions in multiple industries. To arrive at the selection each year, Pantone’s color experts comb the world looking for new color influences. This year, experts said they were seeking “authentic and immersive experiences that enable connection and intimacy” in today’s world of digital technology and social media. “The engaging nature” of Living Coral “welcomes and encourages lighthearted activity.” The color (a sort of pinkish orange) is a “nurturing” one that “appears in our natural surroundings,” according to Pantone. HOLIDAY GARDEN DECOR ... It’s possible you may already have a garden full of things you can use to decorate your home for the holidays. According to Jenny Andrew of Garden Design magazine, classic boxwood shrubs, holly, paperwhites, evergreen (branches and cones), as well as amaryllis, make great holiday centerpieces or decor. Send notices of news and events related to real estate, interior design, home improvement and gardening to Home Front, Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302, or email elorenz@ paweekly.com. Deadline is one week before publication.
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Above: Architect Helena Barrios Vincent raised the living room ceiling to 12 feet and added sliding-glass doors to Lynn and Joe Felter’s Midtown home. Top right: The kitchen was remodeled but plumbing fixtures were not moved. See online slideshow at PaloAltoOnline.com.
L
Transforming a long-term rental into a family home
The yard (with its reclaimed bathtub, foreground) can be seen from most parts of the home.
Story by Carol Blitzer | Photos by Veronica Weber ynn and Joe Felter didn’t really mind square shower has two glass walls, frosted about that the midcentury modern home they two-thirds of the way up for privacy. rented in 2010 was what she called “quite The bedroom itself is awash in light from a dump.” They were only planning to stay there windows facing the roomy backyard. The hot with their three sons for under a year. tub was moved over to be close to the master But while Joe was deployed to Afghanistan, bedroom. A large sofa, made from recycled teak the Midtown Palo Alto house suddenly came on flooring that used to be inside, now sits outdoors. the market. Lynn jumped to buy it. Throughout the house, the floors were up“Joe hated this house. We didn’t think we had graded to multi-toned acacia wood and basethe money to remodel, so we did cheap remod- board radiant heating was added. els,” Lynn said. With a high-ceiling living room and new Eight years later, they were settled in the com- master-bedroom suite, the old kitchen became munity and decided to make that “dump” into a the next target for remodeling. real home. “We went a little over budget,” Lynn said. “We Palo Alto architect Helena Barrios Vincent added one more bathroom. Then we added the helped the Felters zero in on what was working kitchen and heating halfway through.” and what was not. The costs for the kitchen were kept in check “Before, we had gigantic furniture (collected by not moving any of the plumbing, Vincent in Asia) that filled a small space,” Lynn said. said. “(Vincent) designed a space that profoundly “The old cabinets didn’t open and close,” changed the way our family interacts with one Lynn said, so they changed them out for white another. melamine-coated cabinets from IKEA. “The “We never used to sit in the living room be- price difference is phenomenal. IKEA’s come cause it was not comfortable. Now we sit and a long way (in terms of quality),” Vincent said. talk to each other, which is lovely with three To take advantage of the view and light, she teenagers.” minimized the walls separating the kitchen from Vincent began by raising the ceiling in the the living/dining room areas. One wall was kept living room to 12 feet, then adding Fleetwood near the stove, leaving plenty of space for a large stacking sliding-glass doors leading outside, Asian cabinet in the living room. where all can enjoy the view of a giant redwood. Vincent pushed out the exterior wall two feet, Then she designed a master-bedroom suite, just under the eaves. “It made a huge difference” with angled 10-foot ceilings and large windows in how the space worked, she said. overlooking the backyard. A walnut butcher-block counter complements Today the suite is entered through a wide the white Caesarstone counter along one wall. walkway lined with an interior-lit closet. To In the middle is an IKEA freestanding island, the left is the master bath with a modern free- topped by white-stained bamboo, “so it wouldn’t standing tub next to windows overlooking the compete with our beautiful walnut,” Vincent landscape. (The first tub arrived cracked, but said. it was quickly reinvented as an outdoor planter The backsplash, what Vincent called “a little with streaming succulents.) An accent wall be- splurge,” is Heath tile. “I tell my clients to focus hind the tub was created from recycled wood; a on one thing, like windows or doors (or tile), second wall has a niche for shampoo and soap. that’s worth spending more.” A square vessel sink sits atop a white CaesarEven with the tile, the kitchen remodel only stone counter, all over a zebrawood vanity. The added about $15,000.
By switching to a tankless water heater, the Felters captured the space where the tank water heater previously lived and use it as a linen closet. The outside was impacted as well. “It was pretty bleak, boring, with no windows (to break up the walls),” Vincent said. “We redid the driveway and added little accents with stained black cedar.” While her husband was away for much of the construction (he works in Washington, D.C., coming home every three weeks), Lynn made all the construction decisions. She’s very pleased with the end result. “The joy I feel walking from the new bedroom to my office: so much light, high ceilings,” she said. Q Freelance writer Carol Blitzer can be emailed at carolgblitzer@gmail.com.
RESOURCES Architect: Helena Barrios Vincent, Palo Alto, 650-996-3669, hbvarchitecture.com Contractor: David Liguori, 2nd Generation Development, San Carlos, 650-596-0683, 2ndgenerationdevelopment.com Interior Design: Sheri Tye, 650-996-3669, hbvarchitecture.com Landscape Design: Ira Livneh, birch tree gardens, Palo Alto, 650-704-4896, birchtreegardens.com Structural engineer: Humza Chowdhry, Jamie Green, HC Structural Engineering, San Mateo, 650-557-4333, hcseonline.com Goal of project: Add master-bedroom suite, raise ceilings, modernize kitchen Year house built: mid-1950s Size of home, lot: 1,712 sf (includes garage) plus 472 sf addition on 7,746 sf lot Time to complete: Eight months of construction Budget: About $300,000
www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 27
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Sports Shorts
SH Prep grad named football All-American by Rick Eymer
Saturday
High school wrestling: Palo Alto, 8 a.m., NFHSnetwork.com High school frosh basketball: Sacred Heart Cathedral at Gunn, 11 a.m., NFHSnetwork.com College women’s basketball: Baylor at Stanford, noon, Pac-12 Networks High school JV girls basketball: Hercules at Gunn, noon, NFHSnetwork.com High school soph basketball: Sacred Heart Cathedral at Gunn, 12:30 p.m., NFHSnetwork.com High school girls basketball: Hercules at Gunn, 1:30 p.m., NFHSnetwork.com College men’s basketball: Eastern Washington at Stanford, 4 p.m., Pac-12 Networks High school football: Lincoln San Diego vs. Menlo-Atherton at Sequoia, 6 p.m., NFHSnetwork.com College women’s volleyball: NCAA Championship at Minnesota, 6 p.m., ESPN2
Tuesday College women’s basketball: Stanford at Tennessee, 3 p.m., SEC Network College men’s basketball: San Jose State at Stanford, 7 p.m., Pac12 Networks
www.PASportsOnline.com For expanded daily coverage of college and prep sports, visit www.PASportsOnline.com
(continued on page 38)
(continued on next page)
Menlo-Atherton’s Noa Ngalu (far right) hopes to complete a “dream” season with a state championship.
STATE FOOTBALL
The chance to finish on top M-A puts it all on the line in championship game
by Glenn Reeves t’s a rare circumstance for a senior to have the opportunity to win a state championship the last time he suits up in a high school football game. Such is the case for the 28 seniors on Menlo-Atherton’s 70man roster as the Bears prepare to play Lincoln of San Diego on Saturday for the CIF 3-AA state championship. Kickoff is slated for 6 p.m. at Sequoia High. “It’s every high school football player’s dream,’’ said M-A senior Noa Ngalu, a standout lineman
I
who will play his college football at the University of Washington. It won’t be easy. State-final entrants from Southern California are invariably the battle-tested survivors out of a larger population group and a challenge for teams from the North. M-A has been the more athletic team in virtually all its games this season. That won’t be the case against Lincoln. “They are different than anything we’ve seen,’’ M-A coach Adhir Ravipati said. “Most games we’ve been the bigger, stronger,
PREP BASKETBALL
Vikings learning on the go Boys, girls teams shaping identities
by Glenn Reeves alo Alto heads into a tough road match-up with host Salesian on Saturday with a full squad, though several football players are still working themselves into basketball shape. In their win over Santa Teresa on Wednesday, the Vikings discovered they cannot take anything for granted. Santa Teresa’s best player fouled out early in the third quarter and Palo Alto immediately opened a 10-point lead. It looked like smooth sailing the rest of the way for the Vikings. Not so fast. Santa Teresa went on a 22-10 run in the fourth quarter to come all the way back to grab a one-point lead with 1:07 left. But Marvin Zou staved off a possible demoralizing loss with a baseline
P
Page 36 • December 14, 2018 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
drive for a bucket and the lead and Paly held on for a 54-53 victory Wednesday at the Peery Center. “Santa Teresa’s a scrappy team,’’ Palo Alto coach Rodney Tention said. “I hate to say it, but they wanted it more than we did at times. We were fortunate to win.’’ Palo Alto (4-2) led 27-21 at halftime before the Saints hit their first three shots of the third quarter to pull even at 27-27. One of those baskets was a slam dunk by Mahmoud Fofana, a slender post player who was dominating inside. A basket by Zou on an early release put Paly back ahead. Then Fofana was called for his fourth foul. He argued the call and was hit with a technical, (continued on page 39)
David Hickey
READ MORE ONLINE
faster team. We’ll be outmanned athletically against them, which is something we haven’t seen. We’ll have to play really well, can’t have self-inflicted wounds, can’t turn the ball over or make stupid penalties, can’t make mental mistakes that lead to big plays for them.’’ This is M-A’s second statechampionship game appearance the last three years. In 2016 the Bears lost to Paraclete of Lancaster, 39-21. Ngalu was a starter on that team as a sophomore as was
S
Friday High school JV girls basketball: Wallenberg at Gunn, 4:30 p.m., NFHSnetwork.com High school boys basketball: Pinewood at Pacific Bay Christian, 5:30 p.m., NFHSnetwork.com High school girls basketball: Wallenberg at Gunn,6 p.m., NFHSnetwork.com High school JV boys basketball: St. Abraham’s at Gunn, 6 p.m., NFHSnetwork.com
tanford junior outside hitter Kathryn Plummer, tabbed espnW’s Women’s Volleyball National Player of the Year on Thursday, thrives on honing her skills in every facet of the game. She’s becoming as p r of ic ient a defensive player as she is an of fensive force. “She has the potential to be a very good Kathryn Plummer international player because she has the entire skill set,” U.S. national team coach Karch Kiraly told espnW. “Very few players come out of college with all the skills -- serving, defending, hitting out of the backcourt, along with hitting and blocking. Plus, she did some setting before going to Stanford. She has a wonderful skill set all around.” espnW presented top player honors to Plummer a second straight year. Plummer led the Cardinal into its third consecutive Final Four. Plummer was named to the AVCA All-America first team on Wednesday for the third straight season. She becomes the ninth Cardinal player to be at least a three-time first team pick. The two-time Pac-12 Player of the Year was also a back-to-back AVCA All-Pacific North Region Player of the Year. Plummer, a native of Aliso
John P. Lozano/isiphotos.com
ON THE AIR
espnW tabs Plummer its top player
Robert W. Dahlberg
BACK IN THE POOL ... Several Stanford graduates and current players will be participating with the United States women’s national water polo team five-match exhibition series against China and The Netherlands that begins Friday night at the Torrance Aquatic Center. Olympians Melissa Seidemann, Jamie Neushul, Maggie Steffens, Jordan Raney and Kiley Neushul will be joined by former Cardinal AllAmerican Gabby Stone, who trained with the national team leading up to the 2016 Rio Olympics, and current players Makenzie Fischer and Aria Fischer for the eight-day tour around Southern California. The Americans (28-1) play China on Friday night and then again Sunday at UC Irvine’s Woollett Aquatic Center at 2 p.m. The U.S. plays Netherlands on Tuesday at Pomona-Pitzer (7:30 p.m.), Thursday at the Brenda Villa Aquatic Center in Commerce (7 p.m.) and next Saturday, Dec. 22 at El Toro High (2 p.m.). One of the tour’s highlights is Thursday’s match, which is being promoted as Latina Heritage Night and where Villa, an Olympic gold medalist and Water Polo Hall of Fame member who currently coaches at Castilleja, and fellow Olympian Patty Cardenas will be honored.
OF LOCAL NOTE
Palo Alto’s Jamir Shepard, fresh off a successful football season, leaps to block this shot attempt against Santa Teresa.
Of local note (continued from previous page)
Viejo, has produced 30 percent of the Cardinal’s kills this season. She ranks seventh in the nation in kills per set (4.76) and fifth in points per set (5.44). Her 10 double-doubles leads the team and she has hit .300 or better in 14 matches. After Stanford beat Penn State, Cardinal coach Kevin Hambly declared Plummer “asserted her will on the match. That’s what maker her the Player of the Year.” Nittany Lions coach Russ Rose said of Plummer: “She’s a terrific point scorer. I’m impressed with the confidence she has.” Football Sacred Heart Prep grad Ben Burr-Kirven, a linebacker for Washington, earned a spot on both the Associated Press All-America football first team and the Football Writers Association of America’s All-America first-teams. Burr-Kirven, a senior, was named the Pac-12 Pat Tillman Defensive Player of the Year last week and also was the conference’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year for football, making him the first man ever to win those two awards. One of four finalists for the Lott IMPACT Trophy, Burr-Kirven heads into the Huskies’ date with Ohio State in the 2019 Rose Bowl as the nation’s leading tackler, with 165 total stops, most by a Husky since 1989. He’s also among the national leaders in both fumble recoveries and forced fumbles.
Stanford sophomore cornerback Paulson Adebo was named second-team All-America by the Football Writers Association of America. Adebo is the youngest Cardinal defensive player to earn FWAA All-America recognition and joins Christian McCaffrey as the only Stanford sophomores to make the list. The Mansfield, Texas native leads the country with a schoolrecord 23 passes defended (19 breakups and four interceptions). His 19 pass breakups also set a school standard and ranks second in the nation. Women’s soccer Stanford sophomore forward Catarina Macario was named TopDrawerSoccer’s Women’s Soccer Player of the Year and is joined by four other Cardinal players who earned spots on the publication’s Best XI teams. Macario was joined by senior Jordan DiBiasi on the Best XI first team, senior Alana Cook picked up Best XI second-team honors, senior Tegan McGrady was named to the Best XI third team and freshman Naomi Girma was a member of the Freshman Best XI first team. Macario, the ESPNW Player of the Year in each of her two seasons at Stanford, is also a finalist for the MAC Hermann Trophy, the highest individual honor in college soccer. The two-time Pac-12 Forward of the Year led the conference in points (36) and goals (14), including several strikes of
the highest quality during Stanford’s undefeated regular season and run to the College Cup. Men’s soccer Tanner Beason and Amir Bashti were named United Soccer Coaches NCAA Division I All-Americans. Itís the fifth consecutive season Stanford has had multiple players honored. Beason, a redshirt junior center back, earned a spot on the first team and Bashti, a senior forward, the third team. With their selections, the Cardinal has accumulated 11 All-America honors since 2014. Also one of 15 MAC Hermann Trophy Semifinalists, Beason put together a brilliant redshirt junior campaign in which he was voted the Pac-12 Player of the Year and Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, the first in conference history to receive both honors. He led the Pac-12 in both goals (6) and points (15). Defensively, the Cardinal was eighth in the country in team goals against average (0.625) and fifth in shutouts (12). All-Pac-12 first team pick, Bashti finished sixth in the league in scoring and fifth in points with a career-high seven goals and six assists this season. The senior twice earned Pac-12 Player of the Week awards following a brace against Delaware on Sept. 16 and a two-goal, two-assist weekend to begin conference action in late September against San Diego State and UCLA. Bashti played in 88 matches during his career, scored 19 goals and had 13 assists. Q
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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 37
Sports
M-A football (continued from page 36)
ATHLETES OF THE WEEK Ila Lane
Noa Ngalu
PRIORY BASKETBALL The UC Santa Barbara-bound senior scored 49 points and had 51 rebounds to help the Panthers win the Terra Nova Jim Soden tournament over the weekend. She had 21 rebounds and 13 points in the title game
MENLO-ATHERTON FOOTBALL The senior two-way lineman, headed to Washington, was a major factor in the Bears 27-20 victory over Eureka in the Northern California 3-AA championship, including recovering a fumble that led to a TD.
Honorable mention Evelyn Calhoon
Avery Lee
Chad Creighton
Abby Ericson
Gabby Ruiz
Jonny Ebrahimian
Amaya Gray
Ashley Wang
Troy Franklin*
Menlo-Atherton wrestling Menlo-Atherton wrestling Priory soccer
Menlo basketball Priory basketball Palo Alto wrestling
Palo Alto wrestling Menlo soccer
Menlo-Atherton football
Watch video interviews of the Athletes of the Week, go to PASportsOnline.com
Across 1 Little drinks 5 TV monitoring gp. 8 Waits 13 Muscle problem 14 Jazz legend Fitzgerald 15 Fail to be 16 Lubricant used at the front and rear of an automobile drivetrain 18 Cuba ___ (rum drink) 19 Artistic interpretation of one’s feelings, maybe 21 Alfonso Ribeiro-hosted show featuring viewer submissions, for short 22 Ward of “Gone Girl” 23 “Claws” network 24 “Matilda the Musical” songwriter Minchin 27 Lover 29 “___ Believer” (Monkees song) 31 It may be half-baked 33 Cedar alternative 36 Bisected 40 It contains numerators and denominators within numerators and denominators 43 Skier’s spot 44 Clean up some topiary 45 ___ gin fizz 46 Lamentable 48 Family member, briefly 50 PGA VIP Ernie 51 Place to chill out 54 Lemon zest source 57 “Death ___ Funeral” (2007 or 2010 film) 59 Snarky social media response to an undeserved boast (and this puzzle’s theme) 64 Heart chambers 65 Eddie Murphy’s role in “Beverly Hills Cop” 67 Adrien of “The Pianist” 68 Adjust, as banjo strings 69 Dory helped find him 70 Heavy items dropped in cartoons
sophomore Raymond Spriggs Jr., “They have real good skill playwho has thrown 20 touchdown ers,’’ Heimuli said. “I think it will passes, and junior be a great matchup.’’ Chris Davila, who’s M-A has used five thrown 12 TD passes. different players at Both saw significant quarterback this season playing time against due to injuries suffered Culver City. The two by starter Jack Alexanhave combined for der, who has appeared 3,018 yards passing. in six games. He was Their primary targets 7 of 11 for 190 yards are Jamahd Monroe (57 against Eureka before catches, 1,254 yards, being relieved late by 13 touchdowns) and freshman Matt MaKeyshawn Smith (44 Daniel Heimuli cLeod, as was the case catches, 945 yards, 14 TDs). Car- the previous week against Willito Nothaft has rushed for 1,273 cox. Alexander has 14 touchdown yards and 16 touchdowns. passes among his 58 completions this season. Deston Hawkins (889 yards) and Jaeden Barker (625 yards) are the team’s leading rushers. Sophomore wide receiver Troy Franklin has caught 11 touchdown passes along with four TDs rushing, including the game-winners the last two weeks against Wilcox and Eureka. “Lately Troy has really stepped into a play-making role,’’ Ravipati said. “It speaks to his growth as a player. I’m excited about his future.’’ As for the present, it’s all about finding a way to come out on top Malik Johnson against a talented Southern CaliMenlo-Atherton football fornia ream and finish the season Cole Kastner as a state champion. Menlo basketball “This is another chance to make Zach Zafran M-A history,’’ Ngalu said. “And Priory basketball to play for my community, friends *Previous winner and family, as well.’’Q Robert W. Dahlberg
Robert W. Dahlberg
highly-recruited inside linebacker Daniel Heimuli. “Hopefully we can finish it this year,’’ Heimuli said. “It will be emotional for sure. It’s good having the experience of playing in a state championship game and being able to teach your teammates what not to do, what to do, what to expect.’’ M-A (12-2) goes into the game on a 10-game winning streak that dates to a 27-0 loss at Valor Christian, the eventual undefeated
Colorado state champion. But Ra- a 33-28 victory over Wilcox in the vipati thinks Lincoln is the most final. Then the Bears were sent all athletic team M-A has the way to Eureka for faced. the NorCal champion“Valor Christian was ship game and pulled very good, but didn’t out a 27-20 win. have the team speed Lincoln is a school Lincoln does,’’ Ravipati with a notable athletic said. “It’s like they have past. Future NFL star track stars all over the running backs Marcus field. It puts a lot of Allen and Terrell Davis stress on your defense.’’ played their high school M-A defeated Milball there. The 2018 pitas 45-28 and Palo team is 11-4 with two Alto 17-7 in the first Deston Hawkins of its losses by forfeit. two rounds of the Central Coast The Hornets beat Culver Section playoffs before rallying City 54-46 in the SoCal final. with a 19-point fourth quarter for They employ two quarterbacks:
“It’s Not Unusual”— the phrase makes it. Matt Jones
This week’s SUDOKU
Answers on page 25.
Answers on page 25.
71 ___-Pekka Salonen (conductor soon to lead the San Francisco Symphony) 72 Cable channel since 1979 Down 1 Rocksteady precursor 2 “Never Tear Us Apart” band 3 Global extremity 4 Ancient stone slab (anagram of TESLA) 5 State of change 6 Snippets, like those shown on 21-Across 7 Core group 8 Vinegar variety 9 Spring bloom 10 Credit counterpart 11 “The Smartest Guys in the Room” company 12 Cardiologist’s dilator
Page 38 • December 14, 2018 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com
14 Heighten 17 Excruciatingly loud, in sheet music 20 Roth of “Inglourious Basterds” 24 Nervous spasms 25 “Rebel Yell” singer Billy 26 Inbox item 28 “thank u, ___” (Ariana Grande song) 30 Farm residents? 32 Venmo and Hinge, e.g. 34 Egypt’s cont. 35 Kardashian matriarch 37 Scrabble piece 38 Sheared stuff 39 They’re “on” in binary 41 They’re always in February 42 Good-natured
www.sudoku.name
47 “___ Poetry Jam” 49 Double ___ (Oreo variety) 51 Q-Tip ends 52 Ancient city in Jordan 53 With an ___ distinction 55 Bring delight to 56 High-end Toyota 58 Make good (for) 60 Six Flags attraction 61 TV “Warrior Princess” played by Lucy Lawless 62 Acapulco accolades 63 1996 veep candidate 66 Hither and ___ ©2018 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com)
Sports
Prep basketball (continued from page 36)
which also counted as a personal foul, and he sat down for the rest of the game with 5:20 left in the third quarter. Paly made it a 10-0 run on another field goal by Zou, a basket and two free throws off the technical by Anthony Yu and a bucket by Jackson Chryst to make it 3727. Paly’s biggest lead came at the start of the fourth quarter when a 3-pointer by Conner Lusk extended the lead to 42-31. But as the team was soon to find out, the game was far from over. “We got crushed on the glass,’’ Tention said. “We’ll get better. We have to. There are no easy games on our schedule.’’ Like the next game against the undefeated Pride (7-0). The Vikings will need to play better than they did against Santa Teresa to make that one competitive. Zou had a team-high 11 points Wednesday. Lusk scored 10 and Yu 9. Santa Teresa’s Miguel Calladero, listed at 5-foot-9 and 125 pounds, led all scorers with 15 points. “We got killed on the glass and that’s effort,’’ Tention said. “We’ve got to team rebound, all five going after the ball. Rebounding is a lot of heart, moving your feet and searching for the ball. We’ve got to get better.’’ Paly girls on the rise Ellie Jeffries has been part of some pretty good girls basketball teams at Palo Alto during her career and each team has established its own winning identity even as the Vikings sometimes struggle through a tough preseason schedule. After beating host MenloAtherton, 52-33, on Wednesday night in a nonleague game, Palo Alto is basically on the same path again. During Jeffries tenure, the Vikings (3-2) have forged a 29-17 nonleague record for a very respectable .630 winning percentage.
That’s translated into a lofty 32-4 Santa Clara Valley Athletic League De Anza Division mark the previous three years, two league titles and two Central Coast Section Division I titles. “When I was a freshman I was fortunate to have great senior
leaders,” Jeffries said. “My role has changed every year and I want to do for these underclassmen what the seniors did for me.” With a sophomore-heavy rotation, led by the energetic Annika Shah, there’s plenty for Jeffries to do. Q
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Paly senior Ellie Jeffries hopes the Vikings can continue their success in SCVAL De Anza Division play.
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Public Notices 995 Fictitious Name Statement PALO ALTO WATER POLO CLUB FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: FBN648725 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: Palo Alto Water Polo Club, located at 1401 Parkinson Avenue, Palo Alto CA 94301, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: An Unincorporated Association other than a Partnership. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): ETHAN ANDERSON LOOK 1401 Parkinson Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94301 BRYAN ANDERSON LOOK 1401 Parkinson Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94301 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on 11/19/2018. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on November 21, 2018. (PAW Nov. 30; Dec. 7, 14, 21, 2018) NORTH HANNA FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: FBN648585 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: 1.) North, 2.) Hanna, located at 133 North Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos, CA 95030, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: A Corporation. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): THAO MY CORPORATION 133 North Santa Cruz Ave. Los Gatos, CA 95030 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on N/A. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on November 16, 2018. (PAW Nov. 30; Dec. 7, 14, 21, 2018) BAPTISTE POWER YOGA SILICON VALLEY FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: FBN649072 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: Baptiste Power Yoga Silicon Valley, located at 2190 W. Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: A Limited Liability Company. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): VIBE YOGA LLC 1386 Dana Ave. Palo Alto, CA 94301 Registrant has not yet begun to transact business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on December 6, 2018. (PAW Dec. 14, 21, 28, 2018; Jan. 4, 2019) CERNA GROUP OF MARCUS AND MILLICHAP FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: FBN649262 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: Cerna Group of Marcus and Millichap, located at 84 West Santa Clara St., Suite 680, San Jose, CA 95113, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: An Individual. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): EDUARDO CERNA 84 West Santa Clara St., Suite 680 San Jose, CA 95113 Registrant began transacting business
under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on 12/11/2018. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on December 11, 2018. (PAW Dec. 14, 21, 28, 2018; Jan. 4, 2019)
997 All Other Legals NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF: DONALD VICTOR DRURY Case No.: 18PR184844 To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of DONALD VICTOR DRURY aka DONALD V. DRURY. A Petition for Probate has been filed by: JOANNE HOLMAN STINE in the Superior Court of California, County of SANTA CLARA. The Petition for Probate requests that: JOANNE HOLMAN STINE be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A HEARING on the petition will be held on February 28, 2019 at 9:00 a.m. in Dept.: 12 of the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, located at 191 N. First St., San Jose, CA, 95113. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or a contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined in section 58 (b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for Petitioner: Kathleen A. Durrans Aaron, Riechert, Carpol & Riffle, APC 900 Veterans Boulevard, Suite 600 Redwood City, CA 94063 (650) 368-4662 (PAW Nov. 30; Dec. 7, 14, 2018)
Call Alicia Santillan at 650-223-6578 or email asantillan@paweekly.com for assistance with your legal advertising needs. www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • December 14, 2018 • Page 39
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