Tucked off Highway 1, just south of Half Moon Bay, rest the lush fields, elegant heirloom gardens and wide pastures of Sweet Farm. As you walk up the garden path lined with towering sunflowers and leafy greens, the crow of a rooster may greet you, followed by the bellow of a cow wondering when her lunch is coming. A flock of wild geese fly down to the hilltop they’ve claimed as their haven. Sweet Farm is a sanctuary, so the animals that live here are not compelled to have any interactions with humans, but as you walk through the enclosures, you’ll likely meet a trio of handsome goats—Hoover, Brownie and Butterscotch—who’ll fall into step with you and happily accept scratches between the ears. Emboldened by the curiosity of the goats, a few tentative sheep and a pair of fuzzy Vietnamese pigs may edge just a little closer to take your measure.

This feeling of encountering animals on their terms is one of the many things that sets Sweet Farm apart from a traditional ranch. Here, animals focus only on their own existence. “We are a sanctuary, not a petting zoo—it’s a very important distinction,” co-founder Nate Salpeter explains. “The animals are allowed to come and go as they please; a sanctuary is a safe place where they can live out their lives.”

dolly + chica

These two lovely llama sisters are recent arrivals from Southern California. “They were on a very small property,” Nate shares. “Their diets weren’t great and they had a severe thiamine deficiency that led to Dolly becoming blind. Luckily, as soon as that happened, we got contacted about bringing them here. A vet came out to see them and put them on thiamine treatment so Dolly got her eyesight back.”

Still, Sweet Farm’s animals play an important role here. In this setting of simple, picturesque beauty, there’s a far more complex mission underway. Behind the scenes, Sweet Farm is actively redefining what it means to be a sanctuary—through farm-animal rescue, education programs, veganic agriculture and cutting-edge food and agricultural technology—and the animals are Sweet Farm’s ambassadors.

As co-founders of Sweet Farm, Nate Salpeter and Anna Sweet (the farm takes its name from hers,) work tirelessly to increase awareness around the impact of factory farming on animals and the planet. With over 140 farm animal rescues, each with a story, Sweet Farm seeks to inspire a message of compassion, respect and sustainability. From Gizmo, a young steer and 4-H project who was destined for auction, to Nibblets, a goat rescued from a live market by a local family, they’re brought here to find healing. “If there’s quail who needs tiny stitches, a turkey that needs a CT scan or a cow that needs an ultrasound because of a belly ache, we make sure every animal gets what they need,” says Nate.

Some animals, like one of Sweet Farm’s first rescues, Stella, just need space and freedom. Nate discovered the sheep standing off by herself at a petting zoo when he went to buy a truck from a farmer. Stella had grown too big to work at the zoo but too small for meat or wool, so the farmer was going to put her down. Remembering the encounter, Nate smiles fondly at Stella, who is keeping her own company at the far edge of the paddock. “I said, ‘Well, if you want this check for the truck, she’s coming with me,’” he recalls, adding, “Now, she wants nothing to do with people.” Luckily for Stella, at Sweet Farm, that’s not a problem.

Sam + Frodo

“Because they’d lived their whole lives in cages, when they were first let outside they couldn’t even really run,” Anna says, of Sam and Frodo. “They didn’t even know how to be pigs.” Named after characters in The Hobbit in tribute to the long, challenging journey that brought them from a dermatology lab to Sweet Farm, the pair enjoy playing in their pasture and napping in piles of hay with their sheep friends.

Introduced through corporate retreats, school field trips and monthly open houses, Sweet Farm’s animal ambassadors are at the heart of Nate and Anna’s mission to show how small changes can make a big impact. By telling the individual stories of how animals are rescued, the larger view comes into focus. To bring their unique spirits to light, Nate and Anna give every animal a name that reflects how they came to be at Sweet Farm or a personality trait. Sweet Farm stresses progress over perfection and visitors learn how they can be part of the solution. “When we teach people about the animals, we interject little things people can do to make small changes, like oat milk in your coffee instead of cream,” says Nate. “Things that are beneficial for animals, the environment and one’s own health—we can all make changes that have an impact.”

The origins of Nate and Anna’s “farm with a mission” dream date back to when they were living in downtown Seattle, nurturing a rooftop garden and working with dog and cat rescue shelters. Nate remembers the effort that went into that first garden project with a laugh. “We hauled 4,500 pounds of soil up to our roof,” he says. “We were growing sunflowers and cucumbers; we had apple trees up on the roof. We were very much into this realm of sustainable living and growing food for ourselves and our community.” Anna leans forward to expand on Nate’s point: “We’ve both always been animal lovers. We wanted to find a way to make a bigger impact and farm animals are the least talked about.”   

Stella

Stella was one of Nate and Anna’s first rescues from a petting zoo. “You might think because she comes from a petting zoo that she’s social and used to people,” Nate says, “but actually the opposite is true. She’d been forced to live in a confined space where she was tugged around, and when she came in here she was like, ‘I’m going to spend my days about a hundred feet away from any human.’”

When Anna was recruited to work in Silicon Valley in 2015, the pair decided it was time to start implementing the larger dream that had been percolating for years. As Anna puts it, “Starting a farm seems like something you could always want but never do, so when we found this property we just jumped in and started working.” Shortly after buying the land, they were married on their new Sweet Farm property.

Though Sweet Farm feels rural, it’s centrally located between Santa Cruz, San Jose and San Francisco. “When we founded Sweet Farm, we knew we wanted to make it accessible to all people, but we also had to make it sustainable as an organization,” Nate explains. “Being here near Silicon Valley and the Bay Area made it possible to have corporate groups come out and do retreats and volunteer days.” The fees charged for corporate events offset the cost of Sweet Farm’s education program, which allows public school students the opportunity to come out for visits. “It’s a Robin Hood model, if you will,” Nate clarifies, “to make sure the whole community is supported. And we’ve done that with all of our programs.”

Nate and Anna both have demanding full-time day jobs—he’s a nuclear power consultant for a number of organizations, including the Department of Energy, and Anna is CEO at Bad Robot Games. As Sweet Farm continues to grow, Nate focuses primarily on building funding and choosing the agricultural technology projects used in the farm’s veganic gardening; Anna concentrates on animal rescues and expanding their education program. To keep Sweet Farm running, Nate and Anna engage a staff of eight, including two full-time farmers, development and education directors. They also rely on a team of roughly 25 volunteers committed to spending an hour or two a week working with the animals and gardens, as well as running Sweet Farm’s CSA and farm stand.

Because of Sweet Farm’s dedication to avoiding all forms of animal exploitation, they use only veganic farming techniques to grow their diverse heirloom crops including beets, basil, eggplant, purple chives and squash, along with flowers like dahlias and sunflowers. As Nate walks carefully between rows of bright red strawberries, he talks about Sweet Farm’s partnerships with humane and sustainable startups: “With our technology programs, we’re helping entrepreneurs in food and ag tech all over the world get their companies and ideas off the ground to transform them into global game-changers.”

Nate points to a scalable technology they use called biochar, created by Redwood City-based Bioforcetech. Biochar is created from human—rather than animal—waste. “It sounds weird,” acknowledges Nate, “but a lot of times the biomass that comes out of waste water treatment plants is packed into bricks and tossed in a landfill. Bioforcetech burns it with little to no oxygen and turns it into a highly porous carbon that contains the microbes that make soil really rich, fertile and healthy.” As another example, Sweet Farm partners with InnerPlant to further research into the development of a robotic pest spotting device that is capable of detecting pest, water, nutrient and fungal stresses in a matter of days as opposed to weeks.

A timely illustration of Anna and Nate’s innovative, get-it-done mindset is the wildly successful launch of Sweet Farm’s “Goat 2 Meeting.” Nate explains how the idea was conceived on March 25: “We had an emergency board meeting and one of our board members, Jon Azoff, said, ‘I’m stuck in these video calls all day, every day, and it would be great to have one of the Sweet Farm animals jump in and have you tell us their story.” Sweet Farm joined a meeting the very next day and then a few more the following day; by the end of the first week, they were booked a week out. After Goat 2 Meeting started gaining media attention, the quirky concept took off and they’ve now brought farm animals to over 6,800 meetings worldwide, reaching over 250,000 people.

When Goat 2 Meeting demand exceeded what Sweet Farm could independently manage, they reached out to ten other sanctuaries to spread the meeting time out to additional goats, llamas, horses and any other camera-ready farm creatures. They also partnered with GoToMeeting—the platform that inspired the playful play-on-word offering—to meet the technological demands of managing bandwidth and the difficulties of stabilizing phone cameras while walking over uneven pasture land.

As they creatively manage more complicated times, Nate and Anna look forward to further expansion, hopefully gaining more acreage in the next few years, while they grow their message of promoting farm animal welfare and working together to create a more compassionate world. Looking out over the land they’ve cultivated with their unique brand of principled commitment, Nate notes that Angel, a small black cow recently rescued by Sweet Farm, appears to be happily communing with Gizmo. “Animals dream, they get excited about things, they get into mischief,” he says. “Every animal rescue is fulfilling. We try to give voice to the voiceless.”

Sturgis

Even with the loss of one eye due to ocular cancer, Sturgis is a handsome devil of a stallion who keeps defying the odds. After arriving at Sweet Farm with an array of health issues, he was initially given only three to six months to live by the equine veterinarian who treated him. Sturgis has outlasted that prediction by five years. He is now best friends with Sweet Farm’s steer Gizmo, and they’re frequently seen playing and napping together in the pasture. Watch how their sweet relationship developed by searching “Sweet Farm Love Story” on YouTube.

Words by Sheri Baer

How’s this for a myth buster? Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain) never actually said this famous quote: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” While Twain erroneously gets credited for it, anyone who has ever ventured to the City in July without a jacket knows the chill that inspired the sentiment.

Twain did, however, make this observation about the northeastern U.S.: “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”

Translate that “Twainism” into our current era and local geography and you get this: “If you don’t like your weather on the Peninsula now, just drive a few miles.”

Isn’t that the truth?

“It’s definitely fair to use the term ‘microclimates,’” says Bob Cohen, a certified consulting meteorologist who lives in Menlo Park. “I would define it as significant changes in weather over a short distance.”

With degrees in meteorology and physical oceanography (“one works with air and the other works with water”), Bob’s professional expertise ranges from weather forecasting in the marine environment to routing ships around the world to optimize speed and fuel consumption. His favorite hobby shouldn’t come as a surprise: “I love watching the weather and I love talking about the weather.”

Andrea Cohn Hillsborough

I like to think of my town as smack-dab in the middle (weather-wise) on the Peninsula. Fifteen minutes or so south to Palo Alto, temps are 10-12 degrees warmer while the same distance north to Daly City brings dense fog and a cooler climate. I drive 20 minutes west and I’m greeted with the ocean’s overcast skies, cool breeze and mist of Half Moon Bay.

While getting his masters degree from Texas A&M, Bob spent his summers launching weather balloons into the area’s huge local thunderstorms. “Each area of the country has its own weather phenomenon—thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes,” says Bob. “The Bay Area is relatively benign, which makes it a great place to live weather-wise.”

Benign, as in we have every right to brag about our awesome weather. “We live in a Mediterranean climate, and there’s not another one like that in the U.S.,” observes Bob. “You can plan on dry weather from approximately May into October.”

From a meteorologist’s perspective, benign could also be perceived as boring, and that’s where appreciating the nuances between Peninsula cities, and even neighborhoods, comes in. While the gradations can be subtle, we’ve all remarked on distinctive climate shifts in play—whether it’s surging afternoon breezes perfect for windsurfing off Coyote Point, watching the temperature gauge plummet driving north on 280 or socked-in summer mornings in Half Moon Bay.

Michael Battat Burlingame

With a strong onshore breeze in the afternoon, Burlingame stays relatively cool compared with the rest of the Peninsula further south. We get a good mix of the breeze and the warmth. In general, the weather never gets so hot that I want to find air conditioning.

Simplifying the complexities of Peninsula weather starts with understanding the marine layer—a  blanket of air that’s been cooled sufficiently by the Pacific, usually to form clouds, which can extend from a few hundred feet to several thousand feet high. “Air within this layer is usually about 58 degrees, same as the water temperature,” says Bob. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, that layer can get held up against the coastal hills or spill through the Highway 92 and Golden Gate passes. If the marine layer is thick enough and the winds are strong enough, it can blow over the top of the coastal range and come down into the valley on the other side.

“The biggest factor is the elevation combined with the wind direction,” summarizes Bob. “That greatly affects who gets what weather.” Proximity to the water—Pacific Ocean or Bay—also plays a key role. “A lot of immediate coastal locations are more moderate in temperature,” he notes. “Even a little bit of distance from the coast can make a big difference.”

Lexi Bisbee Woodside

We moved here from the 101 side of Atherton, and I really expected it to be a bit cooler in the summer because of the proximity to the redwood forests. I was stunned to find the opposite. We haven’t seen as much fog and the afternoons have been hot the past two summers. Winters seem consistent with other mid-Peninsula towns.

Applying those principles helps “generally” explain some of the microclimate conditions we experience. Along the upper Peninsula coast, cities like Burlingame and Foster City get more intrusions of the marine layer, which means cooler temperatures and fog. “From Coyote Point down into Foster City, when you get right on the water during a warm day, it’s breezy,” Bob says.

San Mateo also runs cooler because of the marine layer spilling through the Highway 92 pass. When the marine layer comes into the Bay, it goes to the flat areas first, so that means Hillsborough, at a higher elevation, doesn’t get the same coastal response. As you get higher up in elevation, the fog tends to burn off earlier as well. Bob describes San Carlos, Redwood City and Palo Alto as fairly moderate: “You don’t get as much marine layer and also if the wind is off the Bay, you don’t get the higher temperatures on the immediate coast.”

Lisa Levin  San Carlos

We have the best mix of microclimates—very mild, perfect weather. We are not as foggy as the North Peninsula and not as hot as the South Peninsula.

Menlo Park and Atherton are buffered in the middle. “You’re not having the Bay temperature-moderating influence or the higher winds as well,” Bob observes. “It can get warmer and less windy during the summer, but during the winter, it can also get cooler and there’s the potential for more frost away from the coast.”

Bob summarizes Woodside weather as similar to Menlo Park, albeit a bit warmer. And Los Altos also gets toasty: “It’s similar to Hillsborough but it’s also away from the gap of San Francisco; there’s not much marine influence there unless it’s a very strong push up through the Bay.”

Janet Galen  Menlo Park

In the summer, Menlo Park is generally warm and dry but rarely stifling hot; Indian summer in the fall, with the sun lower in the sky, is more intense than in summer; winter is cool, but rarely cold. Spring is the best—gently warm, blue skies and new fresh growth everywhere.

As for Half Moon Bay, Bob points out that coastal temperatures are a function of exact wind direction. “Half Moon Bay is frequently much cooler during the summer and warms up in the late summer and fall when there are fewer occurrences of westerly winds,” he says. “When the marine layer is super thick, the sun can’t mix it out, which is why sometimes Half Moon Bay doesn’t clear during the day.” 

So, take your pick. Do you prefer crisp, foggy mornings, a gusty afternoon cooldown or a steady dose of sun? And to that point, if you don’t like your zip code’s climate on any given day (or even in any hour), just hop in the car. Bob confirms what we already know: “Within a half-hour drive you can usually find different weather.”

Gwen Books   Atherton

I believe we have ideal weather. I would describe it as a perfect Mediterranean climate. If we experience a few heat wave summer days, the ‘Peninsula air conditioning’ AKA fog creeps in over the hills to blanket us in morning coolness.

It was 1984, during a deck replacement job in a Burlingame backyard, when Steve Spratt’s passion for home preservation dawned on him.

He watched with sorrow as precious and priceless slabs of redwood were tossed due to a lack of maintenance. Witnessing the waste deeply moved Steve and he set out to promote new remedies to combat such domestic oversights.

“Back then, I liked to drive up to Mendocino and hang out at Fort Bragg on the weekends. I’d drive through an area of redwoods that had been mostly cut and see stumps as big as this room from trees that were not there anymore,” he recalls, seated inside his bustling office in Los Altos. “When I saw that deck getting torn out, it was like, man, that’s not right.”

The experience led Steve to found a business that would evolve into Home Preservation Services, a unique residential steward company he launched in 1993. Using a holistic approach to home management and repair, HPS is to a home what a financial adviser is to balance sheets and a doctor is to blood pressure.

The service provides a different kind of “house call” that offers subscribers efficiently-bundled tasks aimed at delaying deterioration, reducing surprise repairs and maintaining that new-home glow.

“We’re trying to completely change an industry—or create one,” Steve explains. “The current home service industry (I’ll pontificate if I may), is completely reactionary-based: things break and we fix them. The whole industry is predicated on that but nobody is preventing it from happening. We’re focusing on that—we’re trying to flip the industry to where it is proactive.”

Steve explains how the business attempts to replace the stress of owning a home with a simple monthly fee. Steve’s 45 employees, including his youngest daughter, Lexi, who works to onboard new customers as she considers future management roles, are specialists capable of completing numerous individual trades and crafts. The company recently named the former San Francisco Giants general manager Bobby Evans as its new CEO, and he joins HPS after years of subscribing to its services.

A home is first given a score that rates the property on its current condition and desired standard. Then a member of the team conducts quarterly visits to each location to provide routine inspections and maintenance. HPS oversees large projects like pool installation or provides homeowners with a guide to begin budgeting for that inevitable roof replacement.

Because a home is often a person’s biggest personal investment, Steve developed HPS to offer resources so that the homeowner can live in the home comfortably while maintaining its market value. He stresses to his subscribers that their homes should be kept at marketable conditions, even if the plan to sell is still years away.

“You’ll hear realtors say ‘location, location, location’ but that’s BS,” Steve says playfully. “Location is important when you’re buying the home but when you’re selling, there’s nothing you can do about the location. What you can do involves its condition. The condition is directly tied to the value of the home. And the better the condition of the home, the more fun it is to live in and the more of a safe refuge it is. One of our clients has a plaque in their entry hall and all it says is: “Breathe you are home.”

Steve’s own sanctuary is several hundred miles north on a 10-acre plot outside Roseburg, Oregon, that he purchased in 1999. Over the years, he’s built the home using recycled materials, including stereo speakers for a deluxe sound system that had previously blared in the arena for the Fighting Illini basketball team at the University of Illinois. Steve’s amassed a vinyl and 78s record collection well into the thousands that leans mostly on jazz. He was elated to learn of the brand-new live Thelonious Monk record, which was taped at Palo Alto High School in 1968 and intends to add it to his collection.

When he’s traveling between Oregon and California, Steve often listens to books on Audible such as Annie Dillard’s American Childhood or any title from Bill Bryson. “He’s a great researcher,” he says of Bryson. “I’m probably solely financing him into his retirement.” Approaching 70 years, Steve reveals that he recently solidified his maturity by purchasing an RV.

In the summer of 1988, Steve was living in Redwood City when he watched the series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth on PBS hosted by Bill Moyers. He was transfixed, admitting he’s returned to the conversation hundreds of times throughout his life. He remains particularly inspired by Campbell, a sage for dissecting the human experience, who suggested to “follow one’s bliss.”

“One of my favorite quotes that Professor Campbell says is, ‘As humans, we mistakenly are continually trying to find meaning in life but what we’re seeking is the experience of being alive,’” Steve says. “To me, that was really powerful to realize. Campbell is confident and calm about the whole thing and it stuck with me. What we’re really after is the exhilaration.”

In heeding the advice, Steve realized he felt the most exhilarated when he’s building something that endures. From its earnest foundation, HPS developed into a helpful docent that guides homeowners.

“Buying a home should come with a warning label,” Steve jokes. “The home is way more complicated than most people think. It took massive amounts of labor, raw materials and money to make it happen. The average homeowner isn’t equipped to take care of the problems, but we’ve come up with a way to relieve them of all that.”

words by Silas Valentino

Christopher Childers pauses on his backyard patio to take a well-deserved break. WooShi, one of his two rescue dogs, sits at his side as the nearby eucalyptus grove shelters them from the afternoon sun and ocean breeze.

This year has been unusual for the dancer and choreographer because he’s had to actually abstain from activities—a function of both 2020 and recovering from knee surgery.

When tracing his career, an escalating routine is revealed; Christopher soared alongside pop music luminaries as their backup dancer, earned the lead in the largest contemporary circus in the world and is fresh from releasing his debut film.

However, the Foster City native and current Half Moon Bay resident is allowing himself a respite today as he rests his right knee following a torn meniscus. He’s five weeks into an eight-week recovery and can admit he’s feeling rather antsy about his sedentary status.

“I’ve had a little arthritis and injured my knee a few years ago, but I feel so lucky,” he says, before cracking into a smile. “But, of course, I’m stupid and still pretend like I’m 25.”

Having hung up the lavish leotard he donned as the Red Bird in Cirque du Soleil’s “Mystère” show years ago, he hankers to return to leading cardio dance classes at the FIT Studio in downtown Half Moon Bay. He describes these classes as his lifeblood where he imparts passion onto fellow dancers by fusing hip-hop, country, Bollywood, Broadway and club dance choreography into a single hour.

Christopher was raised inside a dance studio, joining his mother at her dance troupe by age three, and he’s reached the point in his arc where he’s focused on mentoring. “I’d rather share my experiences with other people,” he says. “It’s all about helping each other. That’s what happened with Carnival of Wonders.”

Released earlier this year, Carnival of Wonders is Christopher’s first foray into moviemaking. He’s appeared on screen as a dancer in several Hollywood features including Mel Brooks’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Showgirls, and he choreographed movement for 2002’s Spider-Man, but Carnival of Wonders is a new venture into creating and choreographing a film.

The dazzling short is directed by Cristopher’s longtime friend Jonathan Lawrence and follows a young and wayward dancer who finds herself in a purgatorial town of lost souls who’ve betrayed their dreams by refusing to pursue them. Elaborate dance sequences were shot locally at the Long Branch Saloon & Farms with a scene at Seal Cove Cypress Tree Tunnel in Moss Beach. The film is a celebration of dance and movement while further serving as motivation for any viewer to pursue their innermost ambition.

“When teaching my classes, I mostly have women of an older age and a common theme I heard was that ‘I always wanted to do this.’ Some of them have stories like, ‘I was going to be a dancer but my parents said there was no career in it.’ I thought about why there are so many people who did not pursue their dreams,” Christopher explains of the film’s genesis.

His own dreams of dancing were hatched not long after Christopher learned how to walk. Growing up in Foster City as the youngest of five children, he was closely nurtured by his family.

“My mom was 44 when she had me and said because it was later in life and my siblings were older, I was their super love baby,” Christopher shares. “Everyone’s attention went into this new surprise in life. I’ve always felt that love. My older brother is still protective and I tell him, ‘You know I’m over 50 now, right?!’”

Christopher’s mother, Sabina, was a dancer during World War II for the USO where she met his father Sherman, who was a pilot for the Air Force. Sabina taught dance inside the Wells Fargo bank lobby in Foster City during the late 1960s and later established the Foster City Dance Theater School with Christopher’s sister Suzanne in 1983. Christopher is naturally flexible and although his mom was strict in class, the payoff came when Christopher began professionally dancing before even becoming a legal adult.

He left home at 17 to work for Disneyland in their “Show Biz Is” production, performing on the stage underneath Space Mountain. He later took a job dancing in Lake Tahoe, where he was spotted by a young, up-and-coming choreographer from Los Angeles.

Paula Abdul was shooting a video in town and after noticing Christopher, told him that she had never seen a guy kick his legs like he can. She was choreographing for the Tracey Ullman Show and encouraged him to come to Los Angeles.

“I was so excited. I was one of those dancers who couldn’t wait to show off. I was in the train of thought of wanting to take every audition and every job,” he says. “My first job was for a benefit and it was free. I never said no to a job. A month later, I was shooting with Tracey Ullman.”

After seeing Madonna on her Blond Ambition World Tour 90, Christopher hatched a new goal and would go on to dance for the megastar, later backing the likes of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston on stage. For 1989’s Batman, Christopher danced in the music video helmed by Prince.

“He was the first famous person I met who took the time to remember every single dancer by their first name,” Christopher says of the Purple One. “The fact he knew our names by day two blew my mind! And he also carried around a clear trash bag for all of his high heels.”

Leaving Los Angeles for Las Vegas, Christopher began choreographing and coordinating for shows such as “Le Rêve – The Dream” at the Wynn Hotel. On a whim, he sent an audition tape to Cirque du Soleil and nine months later, he received a call back for the Red Bird role in the “Mystère” show.

He also coached choreography for other Cirque shows such as “O” and during one afternoon in 2004, while vacationing at a hotel in Palm Springs with other cast members, Christopher looked across the pool and locked eyes with a man named David.

“We talked in the pool and decided to meet later,” Christopher says, “and that was it.” Coincidentally, both were living in Las Vegas at the time, not too far from one another. After getting married, the couple took a year-long, cross-country road trip in an RV to scout where they’d like to live.

After a flirtation with Miami, they landed on the Peninsula, which brought Christopher home for good. Their house is perched on the mountainside above Half Moon Bay and reflects their mutual admiration for Eastern spirituality and Christopher’s lifelong cultural passions: Star Wars and Marvel and DC Comics. An original print of the grandiose superhero artwork In the Light of Justice by Alex Ross is signed by the artist and hangs above the couple’s headboard.

The recent downtime indoors is an opportunity for Christopher to continue expanding the reach of Carnival of Wonders as he applies to film festivals worldwide. The film is appearing at festivals across the globe including Cannes International Independent, Tokyo Lift-Off and LA Shorts Fest and has already nabbed multiple awards including best costume, story and producer from the Oniros Film Awards.

The film’s acclaim continues to humble its creator but the success should come as no surprise; after all, the film’s tagline reminds us that “the soul must go on,” a credo that Christopher never forgets.

Photographer Robert Lico was on his way to Pillar Point Harbor to pick up fish when he spotted a roof poking through the trees near the shore of the Crystal Springs Reservoir. Tucked within the 23,000 acres of the watershed are eight residences for the families of watershed keepers and water department supervisors. “I have used this location many times to photograph and each picture tells a different story. Once while photographing the keeper’s house, it was shrouded by a green haze formed by the fog and sun combining to produce some eerie effects,” the Redwood City resident says. “Growing up in the Bay Area and spending over 60 years living close to Crystal Springs has filled my camera with memories and warms the heart. We are so blessed to live on the Peninsula.”

First off, no, I’m not any kind of doodle—although that’s what I’m constantly getting asked. My name is Max and I’m a Portuguese Water Dog. Although most “porties” are black and white, I have a distinctive chocolate and white “whirly” coat with lots of wavy curls on my belly. I was born in Seattle in 2007 and happily came to live in San Carlos with Lisa, Bart, Sarah and Zachary. I may be 13 years old now, but I still have the heart (and mischievous nature!) of a puppy. One of my favorite tricks is pretending to be asleep when my family is eating dinner. If they step away for even a second, I pounce on any unguarded plate. I especially love eating vegetables: cauliflower, carrots, cabbage, you name it. I also crave this soft, papery substance that comes in a roll in the bathroom. Lisa and Bart try to hide it from me, but I keep finding ways to outsmart them—and gobble it down like I’m at a salad bar buffet. I’m not always making trouble; I also love to help out. For example, I’m a pro at “stripping” the bed. I butt every pillow off with my head and then nudge the sheets and comforter off too. All that hard work makes me tired, so I doze off on the bare mattress afterwards. I seem to be sleeping a lot more these days. I still get the “zoomies” at night and race circles around the living room but maybe not as many as I used to do. My favorite place is Carmel Beach where I follow Lisa into the water and frolic in the surf. Last time we were there, I noticed it was getting harder to walk down the stairs. It’s on my bucket list to get back, but I’ve found my own way to visit. Whenever Lisa and Bart see me twitch in my sleep, I’m running through the sand in my dreams.

Rather suddenly, as per my last essay, I have five grandchildren. And the time went by so quickly that it did not dawn on me until recently that I needed to attend to an important chore on their behalf.

In our family home, off of the upstairs playroom, we have a storage area, about 8’ by 10’ with a roof that you can almost stand up in. Throughout my kids’ childhood years, we sloppily packed their outgrown clothes, toys, books, dolls, ski gear and everything else we couldn’t bear to throw out in cardboard boxes and plastic tubs and eventually filled the space.

The result was a crammed mess, and I so disliked having to think of dealing with this room and its contents that, despite the blossoming of the next generation of Citrons and the obvious purpose of saving all of this hazarai, I put it out of my mind. Almost two years went by after the birth of the first grandchild until I realized that I needed to get up there and start the dirty job of sorting everything out.

Emboldened on a boring Sunday afternoon, I waded in there as if I were entering a dirty swamp, unsure of what might lie beneath the water. In the dusty, dimly lit room, I pulled a few boxes aside, only to realize the enormity of the project. As I slowly moved some of the heavy, reachable pieces into the playroom, a bit of quick math led me to estimate that there were 40 to 50 boxes and tubs of various sorts in there, along with much else. After tugging and tossing for a half-hour, trying to make sense of it, I realized that the only thing to do was to take everything out of the room and figure out what we really had.

That I did and our once clean playroom became a total mess. I created six areas: clothing, books, toys (including dolls), saved school projects and art, miscellaneous and throwaway. I opened each box and placed it into its proper area. It was slow going as I found past treasures that elicited happy memories, causing me to pause.

I tackled clothing first. Some boxes had faded markings on them (0-6 months) and some had none. My 22-month-old grandkids had already outgrown some of the items. I found that about half the boxes were wrongly labeled or not labeled at all, so I pulled out the clothing and tried to find sizes on them. Then I placed everything in the correct boxes and wrote in black Sharpie my best guess of the age and sex (Boys 5-6 years; Girls 8-9 years).  Apparently, we stopped this nonsense when the kids were 12 or so since there was nothing after that. All told, there were about 25 boxes of clothing.

There were about 10 large plastic tubs of toys, and I enjoyed opening them and remembering with great fondness my children playing with them. One of my favorites was the rotary phone with a sound-producing dial. I laughed, realizing that my grandkids wouldn’t have a clue what it was! There was an overflowing tub of Beanie Babies, hundreds of them. Still not worth anything. Two huge containers of Lego blocks, a box full of American Girl clothing, though no dolls, and two heavy boxes of wooden blocks.

In the four large boxes of books were titles that meant a great deal to me since I had read to each child every night for as many years as they would let me. I happily pulled out appropriate books to share now. The rest I put back into tubs, labeled by when I believed our new generation would be interested in them.

Apparently, we had saved every art project and report our kids had ever done. I knew that my now adult children were not going to want these. I also knew that I could not bear to throw them out and that I would just put them back in the storeroom, waiting for my future demise and forcing my children to deal with them someday.

And so much more: the telescope that my Dad had taken such pleasure in giving to me that I could never throw out; boxes of ski clothes, again by age; bikes and trikes; furniture and well, a lot of stuff.

There was one category that was neglected: the throwaway area. Besides some broken plastic tops and some bent hangers, the pile never materialized. I felt strong time-shifting melancholic memories seeing and touching these material objects. I wonder if we saved all these items more for ourselves than for our grandchildren. I’ll gladly pull everything out in another few years to once again be transported to one of the happiest periods of my life.

Just 50 feet to the east of the thousands of cars that rumble along Highway 101 each day, Palo Alto’s Emily Renzel Wetlands is hidden in plain sight. The main entrance is a single-car-wide gravel pullout on the side of Bayshore Road, which then requires stepping over a rope fence and crossing a paved two-lane bike path. Nothing visual about the 154-acre marshland suggests that it is of great ecological significance. But much like letting your eyes adjust to the night sky, it takes time to appreciate the magnificent Wetlands: the closer one looks, the more one sees.

“It is much more interesting than a duck pond… oh, green heron!” Matthew Dodder blurts out, interrupting himself to point out the stocky bird with dark green wings and copper throat darting out from the underbrush along the side of the marsh. Emitting a guttural “Scaut!” call, the small heron flies low over the water.

In Peninsula birding circles, the Wetlands are earning a reputation as a hotspot for less common, elusive birds like the green heron. Migrating American white pelicans and terns frequent the freshwater ponds during their winter migration south. Lesser goldfinches and other songbirds flutter amongst the brush. Raptors like the white-tailed kite patrol the large grassy saltwater marsh from high above.

“What I look for is a nice variety of really rich habitat,” Matthew, the executive director of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, explains. “You can come here at any time of the year and find something interesting. If you’re not seeing breeding bird activity, you might see some new arrivals. If it’s the dead of winter and all the migration has stopped, you’re going to have hundreds and hundreds of ducks here of various kinds.”

The birds are just the cherry on top of the Emily Renzel Wetlands ecological sundae. As one embarks farther into the marshlands and the roaring drum of the freeway fades, a plethora of marsh wildlife emerges. Dragonflies of all colors gracefully ride the coastal breeze. Large jackrabbits and raccoons scamper between patches of grass. Ornately-patterned beetles from the stinkbug family cluster on bush branches or reeds. And amongst the pickleweed plants, one of the largest populations of the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse builds their nests.

The Wetlands are incredibly biodiverse for the area, thanks to a rare juxtaposition of freshwater and saltwater environments. While walking the trails here, stimulating sights and sounds constantly flood the senses. But restoring the area to what it is today required fierce advocacy and engineering ingenuity, making the existence of this rich habitat even more remarkable.

Today, Emily Renzel Wetlands consists of two sections: freshwater ponds and a saltwater marsh. But when Emily Renzel, a former Palo Alto Council member (1979-1991), was introduced to the area in the 1970s, it looked much different. The marsh was owned by the International Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (ITT), which had set up 200 antennas on the marsh to bounce electrical signals to ships leaving or entering the Bay. Additionally, the Regional Water Quality Control Plant utilized the marsh as a drainage site for treated water.

“People were pretty disrespectful of the natural habitats in those days,” reflects Emily, who has cherished nature her entire life.

A member of the Sierra Club since 1964, Emily spent much of her professional career advocating for environmental preservation. She fought against and ultimately stopped the dredging of the Palo Alto yacht harbor in 1970. She also created the first Baylands Master Plan in 1978, which formulated the structure of the Bayland Nature Preserve. Her respect for the Bay Area’s natural environments is deep-rooted.

“We had wildlife around us the whole time I was growing up: birds and ducks, raccoons, possums, owls, crawfish,” Emily says of her Coyote Creek childhood home near San Jose.

But the wetlands project presented a new challenge for Emily. Because the marsh had been cut off from tidal flows by the landfill (now Byxbee Park), all the freshwater drainage from the water plant had turned the marsh into a biologically unproductive, brackish environment. If the drainage had continued unchecked, Emily believes that the marsh would have converted entirely to freshwater, killing the pickleweed plants and the endangered salt marsh harvest mice along with them.

When the City of Palo Alto purchased the majority of the property from ITT in 1977, Emily saw the opportunity to take action.

“At that time, there was still a lot of pressure to build the southern extension of the Dumbarton Bridge into Bayshore Freeway,” Emily recalls. “It would have come right across that property.”

Working with city engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists, Emily spearheaded the creation of a “Beneficial Use” plan for the area. Her plan called to restore the majority of the area to its natural salt marsh environment, while also creating a permanent, separate freshwater ecosystem fed by the water treatment plant.

Pulling off this ambitious proposal required some creative engineering. To restore and preserve the salt marsh, the restoration team installed an underground valved pipe system that artificially reconnected the marsh to the Bay, allowing in just enough saltwater to saturate the marsh and fuel plant growth, without drowning the harvest mice and other wildlife. ITT also removed most of its giant antennas, with only a handful, along with the old radio station building, remaining today.

The drainage from the water treatment plant was routed into levied-off ponds near the highway, and both the ponds and the salt marsh drain into Matadero Creek. To this day, Emily says she is amazed by the way the area rebounded. The wetlands are now bursting with ecological diversity—curiously, even fish have managed to populate the ponds over time despite no natural connection to a body of water. The restoration project was completed in 1992 and named in Emily’s honor. Outside of some minor enhancements, Emily’s original concept for the wetlands remains intact.

“The area is bouncing back and seems to be a favorable habitat or it may be the only habitat available to these creatures,” she observes. “I’ve seen whole flocks of pelicans feeding in the wetlands.”

Migrating white pelicans are just one of the many bird species that frequent the area. New public trails around the freshwater ponds create up-close access to this Peninsula birding paradise.

“Because it is a wetlands area,” Matthew says, “there’s a lot of activity here year-round.”

Duck-like, but noticeably smaller than a mallard, pied-billed grebes are showstoppers in their own right. Matthew explains their remarkable talent: by letting out the air between their feathers, they can submerge their bodies while keeping their heads above water. During the late summer and fall, the grebes will masterfully construct floating bowl-shaped nests on the water’s surface.

“They don’t seem to pay much attention to us,” Matthew observes as he passes by a swimming grebe. “They’re feeding, they’re foraging, they’re squabbling—they’re doing things as if we’re not even here.”

Despite their name, common gallinules are less common in the Bay Area than their close relative, the American coot. Not at the Renzel Wetlands, though: gallinules are plentiful here, brandishing their bright red beaks with dusky black feathers. Their clown shoe-sized feet help them walk over bent reeds and long grasses without slipping and falling into the water—similar surface area physics to snowshoes.

“They feel very comfortable here,” Matthew says of the gallinules’ affection for the area. “I think it’s the abundance of emergent vegetation and reeds. They love these little islands here where they can nestle down and hide.”

Amongst many mallards, an experienced birder also will notice an imposter: gadwalls. They feed like mallards, they swim like mallards and they look like female mallards. But Matthew points out that these lesser-known ducks have a subtle white patch on the middle of their wings, along with an orange bill—two features that mallards do not have.

“There’s a world out there to study,” Matthew says. “I’ve never gotten bored—ever—with birds. Just walking around our neighborhood or sitting around the office with the window open, I’m counting birds all the time.”

Matthew praises the convenience of Emily Renzel Wetlands. Although not readily obvious to the cars zipping by, with its easy access from 101 and new pond trails, it’s an inviting destination for both birders and outdoor enthusiasts. “Along the trail, you’ve got these nice hedges here,” Matthew notes. “You’ll often find different kinds of sparrows and in the winter there will be more. Right now you have song and Savannah; in the winter, you get gold-crowned and white-crowned and maybe white-throated or something rarer.”

Now dividing her time between Palo Alto and San Juan Bautista, Emily is pleased to see that the new trails are increasing visibility and appreciation of the area, although she hopes that’s the last modification for a while.

“Honestly, I would have left that natural area alone in a better world,” Emily acknowledges. “Hopefully it will be at least another 30 years before anyone has to interfere again in this once natural marsh.”

Stanford microbiology professor and nature photographer Robert Siegel lives minutes from Emily Renzel Wetlands. Here’s his account of a memorable experience from this past summer:

On July 10, 2020, late in the afternoon, I had the extraordinary good fortune to see a baby killdeer hatch. The nest was right in the middle of the walking trail but so camouflaged in the rocks that one could easily step on it. Thinking back, I could not recall ever having seen a chick hatch before. It was certainly not what I expected. It was remarkably fast—a few breath-stopping minutes. The chick did not peck its way out. A moment earlier, the egg seemed intact. Then the mom cracked it open, removed the shell and flew off with it. I did not see where she flew. I was fixated on the chick—watching it, photographing it. At that point, I was alone with the chick and its recently hatched sibling. The hatchling looked like a disorganized pile of feathers and legs. I was not even sure it was alive at this point. In a flash, metaphorically speaking, the mom returned and settled back down over the chick.

In fairly short order, the chick staggered to its feet. Killdeer are precocial, which is to say, they can stand up and start feeding soon after they hatch. Like chicken hatchlings, mom watches over but never feeds or grooms them. As the light began to fade, I departed but returned the following morning to try and find them. They had not left a trace, but eventually, by looking and listening for the parents, I found the chicks, hunkered down and hidden by the spillway. I was hooked. I returned every day for the next two months. Each day brought new changes in physical appearance and behaviors. It was like a biology course in miniature.

Because killdeer hatch with mere nubbins for wings, they did not wander far and were fairly easy to find at first. However, after a number of weeks, their wings grew more spectacular and one day they were gone. But soon, I heard them again. They had relocated to the nearby slough. As before, they allowed me to get quite close. I visited the slough daily and the killdeer would approach me within five or ten feet. I imagined that the killdeer had imprinted on me, but then I realized that I had imprinted on them. With the coming of September, the killdeer appeared less frequently, and I realized it was my turn to fledge, to wander off in search of other wonders of the wetlands.

words by Sheri Baer

Her official title is Director of Museum Collections, but functionally, Julie Bly DeVere is also a detective. She has to be, given that her single-minded focus is Woodside’s Filoli House, the stately centerpiece of one of the Peninsula’s finest remaining early 20^th-century country estates. “You want it to feel like it did when it was a home,” Julie says. “To experience that moment, that walk back in history.”

For Filoli, that history spans two families: William Bowers Bourn II and Agnes Moody Bourn (1917-1936) and William P. Roth and Lurline Matson Roth (1937-1975). Tasked with evoking the look and feel of what it was like to live in the 56-room, 54,256-square-foot house, Filoli’s curatorial and interpretive teams confront significant challenges:

• Predominantly recognized for its 17^th– and 18^th-century English and Irish antiques, Filoli’s original collections drew from 20 cultures and 600 years of furniture and art history.

• When Mrs. Roth donated Filoli to the National Trust for Historic Preservation back in 1975, the house had essentially been cleaned out of its furniture, artwork and decorative items.

“There were two auctions historically,” Julie recounts, explaining how the Roths purchased Filoli fully furnished but sold off pieces that didn’t fit with their own aesthetic. “The 1937 auction was described as ‘A Treasure Trove of a Lifetime of World Travel Never to Be Gathered Again,’” she says, “and then in 1975, Mrs. Roth had another auction before she realized that she wanted to donate the house and that eventually the house would become an historic house museum.”

The largest sale Butterfield & Butterfield of San Francisco had conducted to date, the 1975 auction required four days for the furniture and four days for the library. “It was advertised as a collector’s dream,” cites Julie. “We lost the huge majority of the furnishings throughout the house, and most of the pieces lost in the sale are still out in the world waiting to come home.”

And thus, the vital need for detective work—to tirelessly hunt down, restore or recreate Fioli’s treasures and make the house as authentic as possible, a truly “livable” museum.

When Filoli first opened to the public as a National Trust for Historic Preservation site, it was only for garden tours. “I think everybody was pretty curious about what the inside of the house looked like,” Julie says. “Mrs. Roth even complained in those first few years that every time she came over she would see people’s face prints on the windows from trying to peek in.” The historic house began to allow visitors as early as 1978, with great attention given to the property’s wall coverings, marble fireplaces and vaulted ceilings. “According to my predecessor Tom Rogers, we talked a lot about architecture,” notes Julie, “because the rooms were largely empty.”

To fill the house, Filoli turned to loans from the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. After donating the property, Mrs. Roth continued to visit Filoli and is said to have remarked, “It’s odd when the house is filled not with the things that you recognize; it doesn’t have that same sense of home and that same sense of place.” With her death in 1985, Mrs. Roth stipulated that original Filoli furnishings still in her possession be returned to the house and more donations followed—from other Bourn and Roth family members and even family friends who had purchased pieces at Filoli’s auctions.

By the time Julie joined Filoli in 2011, the focus had begun to significantly shift—from “filling” the house to building a permanent collection of original and period furnishings. “Today, we focus on studying inventories and photos and try to recreate the rooms as close to what they were at the time the families were here,” Julie says. “We want it to feel like it did when it was a home.”

That’s where the detective work comes in. And there’s no shortage of sources—starting with Filoli’s archives, spanning 63 linear feet of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, blueprints, inventories, auction catalogs, letters and legal filings. Regional archives yield nuggets too—not to mention the 8,000 books in Filoli’s house libraries and curatorial library, along with family and staff interviews and oral histories. “There’s about 5,000 photographs so far,” adds Julie, “and we’re still scanning; there’s probably another 10,000 slides that have yet to be scanned and catalogued.”

Filoli dates back to 1917, so there’s also the matter of choosing which era—and even decade—to focus on. “That can be the hardest thing to decide because we had two different families living here,” Julie says. “We ask ourselves, ‘What stories do we want to tell and what objects do we have that support those different stories?’” As illustrated by the following restoration projects, once a decision is made, then it’s a matter of chasing clues and solving the right mysteries to bring each Filoli chapter back to life.

The Drawing Room

“This was probably the least historically accurate room,” Julie says of Filoli’s most recently completed restoration. Derived from the phrase “to withdraw,” Filoli’s drawing room is where the ladies would gather after dinner, leaving the men to enjoy their drinks and cigars. “It just felt wrong when you walked through it,” Julie explains. “It felt like a big hallway instead of a space that you want to linger in and have tea and listen to the piano and walk around and see the art.”

Guided by some 30 historic images and a 1936 “down to the ashtray” inventory, the Filoli team, with donor support, embarked on a top-to-bottom restoration, from rewiring the twin Louis XIV design crystal chandeliers to refinishing the Louis XV parquet-patterned floors. With the return or replication of signature objects and furnishings—fuchsia-upholstered sofas, a late 19^th-century Steinway piano, Qianlong period Chinese enameled porcelain vases—Filoli’s 35-foot-long elegant salon-style drawing room began to reappear.

However, the room was missing one defining element—the most memorable hallmark of the space. “Originally, Agnes Bourn selected roughly 40 mezzotints to display; they were sort of a collectible late 17th- through 19th-century poster of the day,” Julie says, “and Agnes pulled together a lovely, very curated collection.” The 1936 inventory meticulously detailed every mezzotint: “We knew the artist, the title and engraver of every piece on the wall, and so that gave us a shopping list to scour the world’s art market.”

Partnering with donor Brad Parberry of San Francisco’s Cavallini & Co., the hunt began in December 2018—with 37 mezzotints secured to date, custom matted and framed and returned to their original positions in the room. “What comes across is that Agnes chose to surround herself with beauty,” Julie observes, “images of women and children and scenes of garden and home life.”

The final step in the restoration is just wrapping up, changing the drawing room’s contemporary cool grey-green fabric wall coverings back to their original color—a warm, buttery yellow with gimp trim. “It’s going to sort of glow like Midas,” says Julie, anticipating the sight. “I love when you get to walk back into the room and see it as it was intended; it feels like a sense of wholeness coming back together.”

The Gentlemen’s Lounge

With the completion of the drawing room, the next project gets underway. “Now we get to fully dive into the gentlemen’s lounge,” Julie excitedly shares. Converted into a trophy room by Mrs. Roth, the space showcased horse show trophies and awards but no original furnishings. “We often had Mrs. Roth’s carriage sitting in the middle of the room,” Julie says, “so it felt more like a gallery space because the family obviously didn’t keep a Viceroy carriage in their home.”

With a bow-tie inlay in the oak floors, the original intent of the room was clearly a gentlemen’s lounge, where Mr. Bourn would retreat with his friends. Mr. Roth enjoyed the masculine space as well, with inventory records and photos showing a card table, leather club chairs and a billiard table. Restoration began with the reintroduction of the room’s original Baccarat chandelier, found broken and hanging in an upstairs bedroom.

And while original and period furnishings and floor refinishing bolstered the room’s authenticity, there remained some unfinished detective work: the original wall coverings.

Damaged by plumbing leaks and replaced with a modern striped linen fabric, the only two historic photos convey a stylized floral silk wallpaper. “The photos are both black and white,” Julie says, “so I was constantly interviewing Roth family members saying, ‘Do you remember the room in the ’50s? Can you give a sense as to what color it may have been?’” The only clue Julie was able to glean was “a sort of peach.” Then, in the final process of a top-down inventory of Filoli’s closets, Julie discovered an envelope containing little strips peeled off a wall. “I danced in my office the day I found it,” she recalls. “‘This is it! This is the paper!’”

Using the period photographs and recovered fragment, Filoli is working with a wallcovering designer to recreate the original pattern and fuchsia, baby blue and peach color palette, the finishing touch on the room’s restoration. “Some of the peony flowers are larger than my head,” exclaims Julie. “This was a bold room for a gentlemen’s lounge.”

The Family Room

Although the Roth family enjoyed throwing big lavish parties at Filoli, they spent the majority of their time in the smallest room downstairs. “We know that the family room was their favorite,” Julie recounts. “Filoli has 20-foot ceilings so the rooms got cold. The family often tells me that they fought over who would get to sit on the bench in front of the fire.”

With donated Roth family portraits hung in their original spots, the room presented an ideal opportunity to share Roth-era stories with visitors. The sole heiress to Matson Navigation Company, Lurline Matson Roth married William Roth, who guided the family business into the building of luxury cruise ships and Hawaiian hotel properties. “We want to show the room as it appeared during the 1960s,” Julie says. “We have a lot of historic views of the room from that period.”

Like other Filoli restorations, it’s all about the details: “Everybody was smoking in that period, so we have Zippos on the table, Mr. Roth’s cigars being brought out, a bridge game with an ashtray at every corner as well as a drink.” For the Roth family, the drink of the house was Jack Daniel’s. “This was the birth of California casual that you would make your own drink,” Julie says, “rather than your butler serving drinks to you,” referencing the room’s well-stocked wet bar, as well as a vault the Roths converted for upstairs wine storage. During the shelter-in-place orders, she personally refurbished a 1960s Zenith TV, similar to the one the Roths owned. “It looks great in the space,” she says. “I wanted a television in that room for nine years, so it was really exciting to finally get one that fits the look and feel.”

Ready for Visitors

Each of Filoli’s rooms strives to capture a family snapshot in time—whether it’s being transported back to the Prohibition Era in the formal dining room or World War II in the kitchen. With new interpretive panels and custom soundscaping further enhancing the feel of bygone eras, now all that the historic Filoli House needs is the return of visitors. The garden and estate trail are currently open with the Filoli team eagerly anticipating the resumption of the property’s indoor tours when San Mateo County’s COVID-19 restrictions lift.

Julie sees parallels to the historic site’s early days, when Filoli’s secrets were lost or locked away—with only tantalizing hints of what was once inside. “I was onsite last week with the sun coming through in the afternoon and I looked at the middle doors of the reception room, and they were just covered in nose prints,” she says. “I just stopped and started laughing; I could almost hear Mrs. Roth telling us that we need to wash that window.”  

Tucked behind the Stanford Mausoleum in the Stanford University Arboretum, the marble Angel of Grief kneels over a funeral altar, her head resting on graceful arms and her wings drooping in sorrow. This haunting, larger-than-life monument marks the resting place of Henry Clay Lathrop, the beloved youngest brother of Jane Lathrop Stanford, who died in 1899.

Already in mourning from the loss of her son and husband, Jane Stanford ordered a replica of the Angel of Grief Weeping Over the Dismantled Altar of Life. The original memorial was created by William Wetmore Story, an American sculptor residing in Rome, for his own deceased wife. While graveyard angels usually represented the innocence and immortality of loved ones who have passed on and the link between heaven and earth, this figure expresses the pain and suffering of those who are left behind.

Jane Stanford commissioned a well-known Italian sculptor, Antonio Bernieri, to carve the statue from a single piece of Carrara marble. The seven-ton sculpture arrived from Italy in 1901 and was placed under a marble cupola to mark Lathrop’s grave. Heavily damaged in the 1906 earthquake, the monument was replaced in 1908, without the cupola. After succumbing to years of neglect and acts of vandalism, the statue was fully restored in 2001. Today, the Angel of Grief waits for anyone needing an empathetic presence or a quiet corner for reflection.

On a stretch of Alpine Road just off 280 in Portola Valley, a familiar green “Webb Ranch” sign comes into view. Smaller print reveals what marks this place as a local landmark: A Family Farm Since 1922. At nearly 100 years old, Webb Ranch may well be the last family farm on the Peninsula not located coastside.

“We were encouraged by my grandparents and parents to roam the fields and taste the crops,” recalls Atlee Frechette, a fourth-generation Webb family member. As the current farm manager, Atlee’s job requires “a lot of juggling and wearing of multiple hats,” contingent on the season. October traditionally means pumpkins—lots and lots of organic pumpkins, grown on 30 of Webb Ranch’s 300 acres, with a pumpkin patch open seven days a week. Weekend activities include hay rides, a corn maze and petting zoo, with a modification this year: visitors need to schedule and pre-purchase online 80-minute passes in advance.

With Webb Ranch committed to helping Peninsula families mark Halloween, Atlee admits that pumpkins will always be her favorite crop. “When I was in middle school, I remember helping pumpkin patch customers load their pumpkins into their cars,” she says. “Today, we’re still experimenting with them. This year, my husband Jonathan and I planted Atlantic giant pumpkins in the garden by our home.” That home, the original ranch house, is shared by Atlee and Jonathan’s son Wyatt, one of the youngest members of the Peninsula farm family’s fifth generation.

How it All Began

In 1904 at age 14, George Webb rode his horse from Lockhart, Texas, to Watsonville and went to work in the strawberry fields. Seeking to find a farm closer to the markets in San Francisco, he was introduced to James Rolph, who leased land from Stanford University. In 1922, George arranged for a sublease and Webb Ranch officially began.

According to Cliff Pierce, who boarded horses at Webb Ranch and chronicled its history in 2003, George initially built a barn and brought in 40 milk cows. He lived in an existing house built on the property by Irish immigrant Dennis Martin in the early 1850s. “Living way out here on the ranch was my whole world,” Stanley, the youngest of George and Florence Webb’s six children, told Pierce. “Some mornings when I got to school…I had already milked four cows. I would get up at 4:30 and get a fire started in the kitchen stove for my mother. It wasn’t just for cooking; it had pipes that went through the fire box that heated the water for the whole house. We had a big mare named Babe and a mule named Molly. Often by 6:00AM I had them harnessed and was out plowing a field.”

Under George’s oversight, Webb Ranch planted fields of strawberries, blackberries and raspberries and delivered the produce to local markets. Stanley, who died in 2018 at the age of 98, assumed responsibility for the ranch following World War II. He married Alice Gurley and they lived in the same house Atlee’s family resides in today. Stanley guided additional expansion, including the planting of corn, green beans, tomatoes, squash, bell peppers and pumpkins.

The Arrival of Horses

According to Pierce, the idea of horse boarding was seeded in the 1950s. One day, Stanley’s daughter Lyndal rode the sole horse on the property to school, and her friends asked if they could board their horses at the ranch. In 1958, a well-known horseman and polo player, Fay Humphries, moved his stable from the San Mateo hills to Webb Ranch. When he arrived, the old dairy barn existed, but no stalls or paddocks, so he began turning the dairy barn into a horse barn by dismantling stalls in San Mateo and rebuilding them at Webb Ranch. Humphries and Stanley came to a working agreement, and Humphries continued at Webb until his death in 1997.

Horse boarding for the public officially started in 1960. Lyndal’s friends got their wish, and Lyndal and her sister Sharon started their own stable, which today numbers up to 200 horses. Summer Hensley, Atlee’s oldest sister, is the current owner/director of the riding program with husband Nathan acting as barn/stables manager.

The Farm Stand Opens

“Heading to Webb to pick up some corn,” was a familiar afternoon refrain spoken on the Peninsula. The original produce stand was not the large structure that’s still viewable today but rather a small stand that sat where the northbound entrance to 280 is now. It was the result of Webb sisters Lyndal—Atlee’s mother—and Sharon who, in 1962, begged their father, Stanley, for the chance to make some money by selling strawberries. Although reluctant at first, Stanley quickly changed his mind after the girls sold 80 crates at $2.00 each on the first day. In 1963, Stanley opened the Alpine Road Fruit Stand, offering fresh-picked seasonal produce directly to consumers, which led to the addition of even more crops.

“Initially, we grew strawberries, corn and Ace tomatoes,” relays Tom Hubbard, Webb Ranch president, who married Lyndal in the early ‘70s. “We’ve added heirloom and cherry tomatoes along with pumpkins and a wide variety of berries.” The ranch was certified organic in 2007, a process that took only six months rather than the usual three years because the farmlands had been pesticide- and herbicide-free since 1962. In recent years, Webb Ranch stopped offering farm stand produce on a daily basis and returned to Stanley’s tradition of selling to farmers markets, restaurants and local grocery stores, including Bianchini’s in Portola Valley and Sigona’s in Redwood City.

Bring on the Berries

Every June and July, Webb opens its berry fields for U-Pick, a Peninsula tradition upheld through summer 2020. If you’re not a berry fancier, you may not have heard about three varieties grown on the ranch—olallieberries, loganberries and Prime Ark blackberries. “None of these are common berries,” says Atlee. “Since taking over this portion of the business two years ago, I’ve learned so much about berry varieties—the cross breeding and how they came to be.” Other offerings include boysenberries, red and golden raspberries and two other types of blackberries, Navajo and Obsidian.

Menlo Park restaurateur Jesse Cool is a fan: “Every year, we wait for their berries. We use them in sauces and a fruit tart and sometimes Taste of Season at Flea Street. And, we freeze them for winter.” The berries all have distinct looks and tastes. “That’s important to customers who make jams and pies,” notes Atlee. “Many of these folks arrange to come out when a specific berry is ripe. They come with lots of flats and pick all morning.”

All in the Webb Family

There are currently nine family members (spanning three generations) living on the ranch, with even more still involved in ranch operations. The fact that Webb Ranch endures after nearly 100 years doesn’t surprise Atlee; she credits her grandfather Stanley’s powerful influence. “He really passed on the excitement and passion of farm life,” she says. “To this day, I’m grateful to go out before dinner and pick a basket of berries or some tomatoes for a salad.”

As covered in our May 2020 issue, PUNCH photography director Gino De Grandis is also a storm chaser, always ready to hit the road to document the largest, most destructive tornadoes. But on Sunday, August 16, a rare, violent thunderstorm struck close to home, fiercely lighting up the Bay Area night sky. Gino describes how he captured this Perfect Shot: “I had all my gear assembled, ready to head out but then I realized that my own street was the perfect setting to immortalize the lightning bolts striking over San Mateo. I placed my tripod facing the Hillsdale/San Mateo hills and started capturing a continuous succession of amazing lightning bolts until sunrise. This particular twin bolt is difficult to get at such high resolution without an automatic trigger; it takes some good instinct and loads of patience to hit it at just the right time.”

Image by Gino De Grandis/luiphotography.com

Approaching Daniel Ambrosi’s enormous “Dreamscape” of Point Montara Lighthouse is a disorienting experience that hits you in a series of little shocks. The size alone—sixteen feet wide by eight feet high—stuns. The tumultuous sky of tumbling clouds, shimmering ocean and vivid setting sun feel almost too real. Beyond the glowing clusters of coastal succulents, the path to the lighthouse beckons, and the closer you get to the backlit aluminum frame covered with a seamless fabric print, the more the image knits together and falls apart. Little swirls of unexpected purples and blues, the impressionistic whorls that make up the landscape, come into full focus and profoundly alter how you experience the work. Suddenly, you’re asking yourself, “What am I looking at?”

That’s no accident. In fact, that wavering sense of reality shifting is exactly where the Half Moon Bay artist wants you to be.

“I’m an avid hiker, skier, traveller and a lover of special places,” says Daniel, standing in the corridor of Princeton-by-the-Sea’s Oceano Hotel where Point Montara Lighthouse is currently displayed. “In certain places, the scene before you just knocks you out, takes your breath away, and my attempts to capture that and convey that experience through traditional photography never fully worked. I’m a very analytical guy, and I was always asking myself, ‘What am I missing?’”

For Daniel, answering that question launched an exhaustive quest, leading him to become a founding creator in the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) art movement. With architecture and 3D computer graphics degrees from Cornell University, he helped pioneer the use of 3D graphics in the architecture industry in Seattle before turning his attention to Silicon Valley. During breaks from his demanding career working in visual and marketing communications, Daniel continued his efforts to capture awe-inspiring views through a camera lens. But it wasn’t until 2011 that he had an epiphany in Zion National Park. He realized that taking single-shot images would never convey the expansive, immersive experience he wanted to share. “We see with a much greater field of view and a more dynamic range of light and shadow than a camera can,” he explains. “The healthy eye sees with an incredible level of detail.”

In a flash of insight, Daniel realized that he could get closer to his vision by combining many pictures into a single scene. He devised a method, which he calls XYZ photography, that involves taking multiple images—horizontally (X), vertically (Y) and with multiple exposures from dark to light (Z)—and then he compresses those pictures into one by applying three different software packages. Daniel felt he’d finally cracked an aspect of the problem he’d been struggling with for years.

Yet, he still wasn’t satisfied. Although his XYZ method provided the visual and visceral moment of breathlessness he sought, he wanted to challenge the viewer to ask deeper questions about the nature of reality itself. “When I see a special place, I feel it in my chest,” he says, leaning forward to express the thought. “When that happens, I wax philosophical: ‘What am I seeing? How would a butterfly see this? What’s real anyway?’ Physics tells us that nothing is solid and seeing is a very subjective thing.” It would take a leap into the world of AI technology to unlock Daniel’s vision and allow him to create the ultimate immersive landscapes that had eluded him.

DeepDream—a computer vision program developed by Google engineers to explore how AI thinks—emerged as the missing piece in Daniel’s puzzle. “Initially, it was a viral phenomenon folks used to turn their family photos into psychedelic nightmares,” he says with a laugh, “but I saw it as an opportunity to take my photography to a place that would evoke a much stronger emotional response and really make you question what it was you were seeing.”

However, DeepDream wasn’t equipped to manage the immense size of Daniel’s XYZ images. He reached out to top Silicon Valley engineers, and Google’s Joseph Smarr and NVIDIA’s Chris Lamb successfully expanded DeepDream’s technological capabilities, super-scaling the software to suit Daniel’s purposes. Using a proprietary version of DeepDream, Daniel finally fulfilled his quest, calling his new works Dreamscapes: A Collaboration of Nature, Man, and Machine.

From the twilight spectacle of Central Park Nightfall that seems to look back at you from eye-like whorls tucked into tree branches and shining out of the pond to the sweeping expanse of Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, which upon closer inspection is shaped by geometric patterns etched in sand and sea, Daniel partners with DeepDream, directing it to access one or several of its many layers to ‘dream’ the image in the direction he wants to go, whether that’s impressionistic, animalistic, or something more surreal. “It’s like collaborating with a partner, because even though I know it’s not sentient, it’s constantly surprising me,” he says. “I can control the direction, but I can’t control the details.”

Given the way Daniel highly processes his images, it’s tempting to think of him as a technical photographer, but he feels more aligned with a different creative discipline. “Unintentionally, the arc of my development of this art paralleled the arc of landscape painting,” he says. “It started with representational landscapes like the Hudson River School painters in the 1800s, and with AI, it started to morph into this new impressionism.” In the manner of Monet’s enormous water lilies or Seurat’s pastorals in pointillism, Daniel’s creations require engagement. “Interaction is vital,” he notes. “If you don’t have the curiosity to get close, you’ll miss the entire thing.”

Daniel’s AI-augmented artworks and grand-format landscape images have been exhibited at international conferences, art fairs and gallery shows with public installations ranging from major tech offices (including Google-SF and Google-NYC) to hotels and medical centers. Private collectors are also discovering Dreamscapes (scalable from 40 x 40 inches to 8 x 16 feet) and Daniel accepts commissioned work as well.

Finally creating the kinds of images he’s always longed to share, Daniel continues to explore what’s possible. While sheltering in place over
the summer, he began experimenting with cubism, in the tradition of Cezanne and Picasso. He has also developed an interest in ‘crypto art,’ where artists can sell single- and multiple-edition digital art works.

As Daniel expands his artistic possibilities and establishes his place in the art world, he has come to a place of gratitude for what he’s been able to accomplish. “The whole motivation was to capture and convey the experience I was having,” he reflects, “and when I see that transfer happen, that’s everything. That’s why I started down this path. It took decades, but it’s satisfying to get to the point where it works.

Central Park Nightfall

Full Scene: This is the “dreamed” version of the entire panorama originally captured; the detailed hallucinations are barely visible at this scale.

Close-Up: At this zoom level, the first pass of dreaming is clearly visible; this shows one style of hallucination.

Extreme Close-Up: Even closer up, the second pass of dreaming in an entirely different style is revealed.

On your mark, get set, go! Come on, don’t you want to race me? Please. Please. Please. I’m ready any time! My name is Lulu, and while I look a bit wolf-like, I’m actually some kind of terrier mix. No one really knows for sure because I was born during Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. That was back in September 2017, and as you can imagine, it was a pretty crazy time. Lucky for me, I was flown to Washington, D.C. by an organization called Lucky Dog Rescue. Kamyar learned about me and decided I would be the perfect gift for his mother Frieda in Menlo Park. Surprise!! Of course, Frieda immediately fell in love with my tall, pointy ears, long eyebrows and coat of many colors—not to mention my loving, sweet personality. I’m most proud of my white boot-like paws, which lead up to my very long legs that love to run and run and run. I like to pretend that my house is a race track, and when I beat my best time, I throw my toys up toward the ceiling and catch them. My very favorite place is the park because that’s where I meet up with my friends. “Chase me!” I bark, and around and around we go, but they never catch me. Thalia, Frieda’s daughter, also visits a lot, and along with Kamyar, we are one happy family. I may have started off life somewhere else, but I’m definitely at home on the Peninsula. Okay, are you ready to race now? To make another dog lucky like me, visit luckydogrescue.org

My daughter Talia had the big idea for us to “get out of Dodge” and head somewhere, anywhere, just to see some different scenery for a few days. She decided that Tahoe would be a good place to go—a new view and feel, but still drivable. She spent time looking for just the right place, since it needed to hold the 13 of us: my wife and I, our three older children, their three spouses and their collective five children, all under the age of two. The only one not making it was my son Coby, the youngest of our crew, who lives in Israel and decided that the drive to Tahoe would be too long.

Talia searched and found a wonderful home on the 13^th hole of Old Greenwood in Truckee. With six bedrooms, a hot tub, access to a lovely swimming pool and golf right in our backyard, it was really the perfect place.

So we set out one smoke-clogged day in three SUVs crammed with car seats, child paraphernalia and our own stuff. We drove into increasingly hostile air, but nothing could stop us from enjoying this time. I had not been away since December, probably the longest that I’d ever stayed in one bed in my entire life. When we arrived at our lovely destination, I felt a real joy at being away from the repetition that had become the norm.

We unloaded and gazed at our incredible view overlooking the lush, tree-lined golf course, excited that we were to play it the following day. All of us boys love golf, including my 22-month grandson who repeats the words “golf” and “ball” incessantly, never lets go of his blue plastic golf club and was immediately mesmerized by the passing golfers as they hit their approach shots to the 13^th green.

We played golf, swam, visited the lake, went into town and really had a wonderful time. Though the air was not great, it was so refreshing to be somewhere else, to feel, for a brief reprieve, a certain normalcy. Each night, once all the children were fed and in bed (not necessarily sleeping), we set up dinners, some of which we cooked ourselves and some of which were takeout. We brought and bought a lot of food, more than I could have imagined we would eat, but we finished it all.

I’m fortunate that my children-in-law are substantive, caring young people who fit in perfectly with our family. We’ve taken many trips together, but this was the first with so many children— ages 22 months, 21 months, 10 months, 3 months and 1 month. All in diapers, needing naps and to be fed, the three youngest very demanding of their mothers for milk. There was constant bedlam—which I loved—since one or more of the kids was in some sort of calamitous situation at all times, crying, pooping, falling, hungry or tired. To me there is a perfect harmony to this chaos, a natural and beautiful rhythm that is the sound of life, bucolic and precious. I’ve always enjoyed the boisterous nature of a lot of children together; it’s a true symbol of joy and holiness.

Since there was only one of me—Saba, as I am known—I was on call all of the time, reading books, setting up equipment, calming down crying infants, playing, napping, walking and carrying them or helping in other ways. It was great, reminding me of the busy times when we had four children of our own under the age of seven.

Talia had the cute idea of getting matching t-shirts for the kids that said, “LOVE MY CREW,” and then it came time to take a photo of the five of them with their shirts on. We went down to the golf course and in between groups, we ran onto the grass for five frantic minutes, trying to capture the perfect picture before some errant golf ball landed on one of us. After many attempts at this, it was clear that  the perfect picture was not going to happen. It seemed an impossible task to get five children under the age of two to all look at the camera, stay still, not cry, stay upright and smile.

The photo’s imperfections played to the reality of our trip. With all involved and so many personalities and the pandemonium of the children, the reality of imperfection was its essence. And that, maybe, is what made it such a wonderful trip. Its imperfections were its beauty, its own particular perfection

Adjacent to the playground and bike path in Palo Alto’s Cornelis Bol Park, two local celebrities graze in their pasture: Meet the Barron Park Donkeys. Their history dates back to the 1930s, when Dutch physicist Cornelis Bol left Holland to join Stanford University’s physics department. Bol and his wife Josina settled in the Barron Park neighborhood. Throughout his long-time career as a Stanford professor, Bol planted orchards and collected a small herd of donkeys for his six sons. He offered rides to the neighborhood children on the donkeys, who quickly became community mascots. Upon Cornelis Bol’s death in 1965, the residents of Barron Park rallied together to fulfill Bol’s dream of creating a neighborhood park with the donkey pasture and surrounding land. Bol Park eventually opened in 1974, including a permanent home for the donkeys. While several of the beloved donkeys have come and gone (with their names now memorialized in the park), Bol Park continues to give visitors a glimpse into the area’s bucolic past. Today, donkeys “Perry” and “Jenny” greet visitors at their corral gate. If Perry looks familiar, it’s because he has his own unique claim to fame. Dreamworks used him as a model for Shrek’s sidekick “Donkey.” Every Sunday from 10-11AM, the pair can be found strolling through the park with volunteer handlers. Children are encouraged to deliver fan art and “d-mail” to Perry and Jenny in the pasture mailbox. Donations and funds generated from the sale of donkey fertilizer support their continued care. Visit
barronparkdonkeys.org to learn more.

words by Silas Valentino

A unique Peninsula town may slip away for good, and its obituary might read like this:

Drawbridge, California, a once thriving town built on wetlands, a Venice in the sloughs at the southernmost tip of the San Francisco Bay where its main street was the railroad track and sidewalks were a channel of wooden planks that rose above the tide to create a floating community, died after a long, lingering battle with relevance. It was 144 years old.

Drawbridge was birthed by train in 1876 to become a community on the Peninsula unlike any other, past or present. Its creator may now become its destroyer as a new proposal for expanding the railway would mean certain destruction.

Nearly a mile long and 80 acres in size, Drawbridge was built as a link through the mudflats and sloughs for the then-new South Pacific Coast Railroad. The train, forever its main and sole artery, shepherded in a community that rose and fell like the daily tides.

First was the lonely bridge tender who had to hand-operate the two drawbridges for boat passage. Then came the duck hunters and weekenders. The town flourished as an Old West Mecca that peaked in the 1930s with close to 90 buildings, including a pair of hotels and many waterfowl hunting clubs. With neither government nor law enforcement, the wild town was rife with gambling and bootlegging throughout the first half of the century. But environmental conditions deteriorated, leading to an exodus and abandonment by its last full-time resident before the 1980s.

Drawbridge is now for the birds. Since 1974, it has been a protected habitat for bird restoration. Members of the avian community flock to its muddy and fertile shores where humans are now legally barred from crossing over the two train bridges that bookend the island. Drawbridges no more, the overpasses crossing Mud Slough and Coyote Creek have been replaced a couple of times; Mud Slough is still a swing bridge and Coyote Creek is a fixed trestle bridge.

Nicknamed “Saline City” for its position sequestered between salt ponds, Drawbridge offered an allure for the adventurous and eccentric that resonated for generations.

Today, when the sun disappears behind the Santa Cruz Mountains, a golden hue is cast upon the stiff pickleweed to create a still life picture of serenity. Beyond the calls of the wild geese or the crunch of succulents beneath your feet, the only remaining sound blows in with the wind.

That is, until the thunderous horns from the evening Capitol Corridor commuter train emerge and the modern locomotive rips through the heart of town.

You can sneak a peek of Drawbridge by riding the Capitol Corridor, Altamont Commuter Express, Coast Starlight or passing freight trains. From there, you might catch the yellow and white graffiti image on a decrepit wooden house depicting the town’s unofficial mayor: Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Absent of human presence but enshrined in its history, prints of humanity remain in the roughly dozen structures still standing but slowly slipping into the slough. As part of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Drawbridge can be viewed on foot from a vista point at the Mallard Slough Trail Spur, a couple miles from the Refuge’s Environmental Education Center on the outskirts of Alviso.

Traversing across the still-active bridge train tracks onto the protected island is illegal and unsafe. Trespassers on federally-managed land may be penalized with fines. However, perhaps in the spirit of Drawbridge’s lawless past, trespassers continue to skulk onto the island to have their look at this historic oddity.

The ghost town’s appeal ranges from urban explorers to history buffs. Dr. Cecilia (Ceal) Craig is president of the San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society and co-wrote the book Sinking Underwater: A Ghost Town’s Amazing Legacy along with Anita Goldwasser in 2018. Ceal leads an occasional historical excursion out to the Drawbridge vista point. (These are now virtual tours with COVID-19 restrictions.) With each tour, interest in the town is resurrected.

“Most questions are about what it was like to live there,” she says. “People try to compare it to their own town—what would it have been like to live in simpler times with no toilets, no septic tanks and the tide coming in twice a day?”

In the beginning, it was much like how it is today. Quiet and calm. The train only stopped on Sundays in 1876 and the bridge tender occupied the sole building on the island. He’d charge duck hunters half a buck for a night’s stay in his home. Within a decade, local newspapers started to write about the secret hunters’ den and by 1890, construction of other buildings began.

The island was officially christened Drawbridge with a white sand paint sign hoisted at the bridge tender’s shanty as weekenders began to arrive in droves. The Sprung’s Hotel opened in 1900 to accommodate them. It’s speculated that the population reached its height during the 1920s with around 600 people congregating during the weekends.

But as Drawbridge expanded, so did the surrounding Bay Area. Salt companies began to build levees and drained the marshes. Water pollution from sprouting nearby cities started to spoil hunting and fishing while freshwater became difficult to secure. By mid-century, newspapers began classifying Drawbridge as a ghost town (even though a few residents remained), which attracted vandalism, looting and burning of the abandoned cabins.

In 1979, Charlie Luce, the final resident, pulled up stakes. Drawbridge—Population: 0.

Altamont Corridor Express, a commuter rail service connecting Stockton and San Jose, is proposing adaptations for the railway in the Alviso Wetlands to improve the Central Valley commute. They published their alternative studies report earlier this year wherein three of the four options call for building new sets of railroad tracks through present-day Drawbridge.

“The only way I can see that work is if they take down the buildings,” Ceal says, adding that the San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society has already submitted its formal comments on the proposal and that the project has yet to be approved.

However, the modern-day Drawbridge tender isn’t crying doomsday.

“As much as I love learning about it, I just can’t justify saving Drawbridge over having better commuting capabilities,” she reasons. “I would like to do one more deep study on it and take pictures to see what’s there before we close that chapter. As long as there is a way to put those new bridges in that doesn’t hurt the habitat or refuge as a whole, I can’t say, ‘Don’t do this to Drawbridge.’”

Ghost towns are testaments to our inevitable demise. However ephemeral, they celebrate the fact that we did indeed exist. They draw us into their fading light for a glimpse of yesterday and after we return to the present, we’re humbled by the tenuous nature of our own mortality.

If you’ve got anything to say to me, I’m all ears! My name is Brando and I’m a Berger Picard, also known as a Picardy Shepherd. You can spot a Berger Picard a mile away thanks to our erect ears that stand four to five inches tall. We also have dark eyes and tons of facial hair. Some say our shaggy eyebrows, beards and mustaches make us look like true Frenchmen. Although I was born in Wyoming, my rare breed originates from the French region of Picardie, which is what caught the interest of my family. I live with Nathalie, Cyrille, Felix, Sebastian and Elvis the cat, and Nathalie was born in Picardie, so we share a common trait. (Although her ears aren’t nearly as big as mine!) My family knows that I’m very intelligent, but sometimes I make it difficult for them because I like to throw in my ideas on what I should be doing. I’m a very independent dog and I’m stealthy as well. Every night I sneak into a room, steal a shoe or sock and leave it in the middle of our living room. Just because. When I’m not snoozing on my back at home, my family and I love to hike Pulgas Ridge together. They keep me well exercised, which is exactly how Berger Picards like it. If I’m not hiking, then you’ll find me being happily chased by other dogs at my playgroup, which is aptly named “For Sniffs and Giggles.” Follow me @Brando_Le_Berger_Picard on Instagram to keep up with my adventures on the Peninsula.

The lonely beige building at the south end of the Menlo Park Caltrain parking lot holds a secret. Its plain white windows are covered from the inside. An unassuming green placard on the front door is the only hint as to what lies within. “Welcome to the West Bay Model Railway Association,” reads the sign in plain yellow type.

Typically, this door is only open to the public on the second Saturday of the month, when the club reveals its masterpiece: a double-decker model train layout in a 1,200-square-foot room. Complete with bustling cities, pristine farmlands and cascading rivers, the layout mimicks the scenery actual rail passengers view every day as they traverse the country. Every detail is accounted for, down to the individual building windows portraying vignettes of everyday life.

“You want to hide these little Easter eggs so that they surprise people,” says Mark Drury, WBMRA member and manager of its website. “That’s part of the joy of the hobby; when you create something this involved, people can see the layout 20 times but when they visit the 21^st time, they see something they didn’t notice at first. Those are sprinkled all over the layout.”

The immense detail in the layout reflects the unadulterated passion that WBMRA members have for model trains. Since 1947, the club’s layout has united adult model train enthusiasts living on the Peninsula. For some, model trains are nothing more than a passing childhood hobby. But the 85 WBMRA members remain staunchly committed to the craft.

“Trains are there no matter where you are: big city, small city or out in the country,” says Clyde King, club president. “Having this building was sort of a draw for people, because you have a fixed place to go to.”

The association’s older members saw the Peninsula at the height of its railway hub days as a part of the Northwest Pacific Railway. Clyde remembers growing up in Menlo Park during the transition era, when both steam and diesel train engines shared the tracks from the 1930s to 1950s.

Clyde explains that model train enthusiasts are particularly drawn to replicating that era in layouts, as they can mix steam and diesel engines while preserving historic integrity.

“I want to model what I see,” he says. “People sort of grow up in a certain time—I was a transition guy. I saw the last of steam and the beginning of diesel. I saw 40-foot, 50-foot box cars, short tankers and all that.”

Clyde is a builder at heart, and joined the club in 1967 because it gave a purpose to his building. Not only will Clyde customize model train cars built from a kit, he also constructs and paints his own train cars from scratch.

“If something looks interesting to me, I don’t care what timeframe it is, I’ll build it,” Clyde says. “To me it’s art.”

Clyde also initiated the club’s layout redesign six years ago. He notes that the old layout was visually appealing, but it lacked the operational capabilities of the new layout seen today.

“It was a Christmas tree layout,” he says, dismissively.

The “highlight of the hobby,” as Mark puts it, and the main activities for the WBMRA are the club’s operating sessions, where members team up to complete tasks on the layout as if they were in charge of a real train. One shift during a session might involve dropping off lumber, picking up passengers or exchanging oil tank cars for box cars on a side track.

“There is some competition,” Mark reveals. “It goes unspoken a lot of the time, but sometimes if we finish our shift an hour before another team, and clearly we did a better job, we may lord it over the other team if we’re feeling like it.”

These operating sessions also demonstrate how high-tech the hobby has become. The club uses custom software to allocate specific train cars for each operating session. The trains are remote-
controlled with devices that resemble TV remotes—only with three times the amount of buttons. The control room section of the club houses a maze of wires and electrical boxes. Many WBMRA members have day jobs in tech, so this kind of planning is second nature.

“A lot of people would think it’s an old man’s hobby,” says Mark, who works in the technology sector himself. “Our membership is pretty well mixed and diverse. We have young people all the way through retirees.”

The WBMRA has several members in their twenties, an encouraging sign for what some might presume is a dying hobby. Mark takes pride in seeing the generations of families visiting during the club’s open houses. Seeing how people bring both their grandparents and their children reminds him of the universal appeal of model trains.

“It’s really fun to be a part of that and to reminisce,” he says.

Clyde and Mark both refer to their model train involvement as a hobby. But seeing Clyde, Mark and the rest of the WBMRA membership’s obsessive commitment, one would be excused for thinking this was a full-time job.

“It’s an escape from reality,” Clyde says. “I think that’s what hobbies are for, anyway.”

words by Silas Valentino

It was a few minutes after 5PM on October 17, 1989, when Jeff Clark, the Half Moon Bay local who’s often found in the water, had a hunch that led him to surf his first wave on the pavement.

He was rolling up power cords following a carpentry job in Atherton when his instincts kicked in, as they do when he’s straddling his surfboard waiting for his ride behind the wave breaks.

“My feet are sensors, like the rail of a surfboard,” Jeff explains. “I feel it coming and I say to my friend Mark: ‘Earthquake!’ His car started jumping side to side, literally doing the moonwalk down the street. We’re standing on the street with waves moving us.”

After the seismic shift, Jeff and Mark raced over to the 40-foot brick wall they had recently completed expecting the worst, but it was fully intact. Not-so-lucky brick gate pillars and fences lay splattered across the street. The Bay Area emerged from the Loma Prieta earthquake as Jeff, the big wave rider, dashed west on Highway 92 back to home, back to the ocean.

A lifetime in the water bred an intuition with the natural world that’s provided Jeff with a holistic perspective. It exudes from his casual demeanor, softened by the ocean-blue eyes he reveals after removing his Oakley shades.

Seated outside one of his two surf shops in Half Moon Bay during a recent hazy afternoon, Jeff produces a half-eaten stick of beef jerky from his pocket and peels the plastic back. He was already in the water that morning and after checking the weather report (by analyzing and peering into the ocean), he’s considering a few more hours before suppertime.

Jeff symbolically exists within the fray between the ocean and the land but he’s the first to tell you that life is not some beach.

“I am extremely open to insight through impression and being in tune with one’s presence and body. We know what’s going on all around us but we just don’t have conscious access to that power. The more you work on the other, the more available it becomes,” he says, before turning his attention to the sea.

“There are times out at Mavericks when I’ve been in situations and I can’t tell you why, but I just start paddling. Then 30 seconds later, when I’m on the wave, that’s when I can tell you why. There are things that if you open up to the possibility of intention or foreseeing, it’s there.”

It is perhaps similar to how there are certain people who become so entwined with their geographical areas that their presence is constantly present, like a fog horn hidden behind the blinding August brume.

Jeff is eternally linked to Mavericks, the world-famous surfing spot outside Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay that he’s credited with establishing. However, he’s quick to shift credit of its discovery to his childhood Little League coach Walt von Hauffe, who would take Jeff and his teammates out to the Point to ride small waves. If Walt introduced Jeff to Mavericks, then it was Jeff who shared the massive wave breaks with the masses.

Jeff is the oldest of four, born to parents who met at a church picnic at the beach in Half Moon Bay. His father and grandfather are carpenters (his grandfather was the president of the carpenter’s union in Redwood City) and Jeff continues the craftsman tradition, designing surf equipment like a specialized life jacket for surviving big wave blowouts and cutting-edge prototypes for fins and boards. In the past, he was a union carpenter by week and would shape boards on the weekends.

Jeff’s inaugural run on Mavericks is now the stuff of local lore: In 1975, when he was 17 and about to graduate from Half Moon Bay High School, Jeff paddled out to Mavericks along with a friend who hung back, famously telling Jeff he would, “Call the Coast Guard and tell them where I last saw you” if disaster struck.

Jeff surfed, returned to shore and would ride Mavericks by himself for the next 15 years before surfers worldwide caught wind and began pilgrimages to Half Moon Bay for their chance at the breaks.

Mavericks is legendary for having the largest waves in California, due in part to unique underwater rock formations and ideal weather conditions. During the winter season, after a strong storm in the northern Pacific Ocean produces a reckonable force of energy, waves at Mavericks can tower up to 60 feet.

“You don’t go against it—you ask, ‘How can I play with this dragon?’” Jeff expounds and points to a nearby telephone pole for height reference. “It’s unreal; you take all of your knowledge and training and then test it in that one moment. You’re never more alive or in the moment than when you hit your feet on a giant wave.”

Jeff organized a big wave, invitation-only contest from 1999 to 2016 called Titans of Mavericks. Competitors from Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Santa Cruz and beyond would race to Half Moon Bay each winter as soon as Jeff signaled the 48-hour heads-up that the waves were reaching ideal conditions. The last event was held in February 2016 after the World Surf League took over but Jeff has every intention of returning by himself later this year when the winter winds return.

The image of Jeff surfing Mavericks is immortalized on a mural outside Cunha’s Country Store in downtown Half Moon Bay. The big wave appears throughout the community; turn right onto Princeton Avenue en route to the Point and even the architecture of a newly constructed apartment resembles a barreling wave. Such an inundation of symbology is not lost on its pioneer.

“Now it’s a cliché thing to call your business ‘Mavericks,’” Jeff says of his hometown. “Everybody wants to call themselves ‘Mavericks Beer.’ It’s just funny to watch people jump on the bandwagon and have Mavericks be their call tag.”

He cracks a smile, flashing great white teeth. “I should get 10 cents for each use,” Jeff says in jest.

At age 63, Jeff sets the bell curve for what a sexagenarian can physically accomplish and endure. Scroll through his Instagram and you’ll find clips of him enjoying his latest passion: windfoiling, similar to windsurfing but using a surfboard with a hydrofoil extending beneath the board that causes it to hover over the water’s surface. It’s the latest in a long lineage of surface water sports and Jeff has spent the last few years mastering it.

“First there was surfing then windsurfing then kitesurfing, kite foiling and then stand-up paddleboarding came along. Now people started putting foils on surfboards to try to ride waves,” he muses. “When you’re using the wind, you’re independent of the water. A lifetime in the water has helped me to know where that energy is. It’s learned.”

Back at the surf shop, a young customer strolls in searching for specialized T-nuts used in a foilboard. The patron asks if Jeff has been out on his board recently. It’s small talk but there’s nothing short when talking Mavericks.

“I went out to Rio Vista yesterday—have you done the wing thing yet? The small wings…” Jeff’s voice dissolves as the two disappear into the store.

In the lot behind the shop, the white masts of a Laser sailing dinghy beat endlessly against the wind while the bay’s fog horn blasts from a distance. It’s the heartbeat of Half Moon Bay, repeating every eight seconds, and the bellowed blow, like a royal fanfare trumpet, accompanies Jeff throughout the motions of his day.

Two of my best friends and I came up from Claremont McKenna College to go to graduate school at Stanford: Jeff Nelson in engineering, Mark Stott in journalism and me at the business school. Jeff found us a sweet three-bedroom home on Waverley Street in downtown Palo Alto. And there we were, three 22-year-olds, all set for a great experience living independently for the first time, except that we had no idea how to feed ourselves.

Since I had gone to Andover prior to Claremont, I’d been running a tray down a food line for a good part of my life, taking the slop that was given, most of it rarely rising to the level of edibility. Perhaps that is why food meant little to me; maybe after all those years of mediocrity and endless peanut butter sandwiches and little boxes of stolen cereal, I just lost interest.

After my first couple of weeks on Waverley living off of Trix and Captain Crunch, I discovered the food that would become my staple: Top Ramen. Back then, you could get 10 for a dollar at Safeway. It hasn’t gone up in price too much since then and the taste hasn’t changed either. The boys and I agreed that one night of the week we would take turns making a real meal for the three of us, and that we would sit down and eat together in proper fashion.

Now sometimes, the definition of that “real meal” got a bit iffy and the person cooking that night might be called out. Inevitably, the one called out would be me for making something like plain spaghetti while putting two types of bottled Ragu sauce on the table. But Mark and Jeff would make excellent meals, proud of their work, and we ate well on their nights. Of course, just being 22, at Stanford and on our own was really all we needed to feel great about the world, good food or not.

Once a week or so we might order a pizza or go downtown to grab some food, but most of the nights, I lived on Top Ramen or cold cereal. There were days when I had cereal and milk for all three meals, and that was just fine with me. Since I have a strong aversion to cooking, boiling the water for Top Ramen and stirring in the packet of flavoring was at my limit.

Fortunately for me, after Stanford I moved in with the woman who would become my wife, and she loved to cook, so for many years I was off the hook. I ate well. But after the kids grew up and she dove into a demanding career, it was once again my job to make sure that I ate enough calories every day.

So I’m back to my Stanford days, trying to figure out how to feed myself, still detesting the idea of doing more in a kitchen than boiling water. I have tried a few items to cook and not only do I find the process endlessly unappealing and torturous, I’m bad at it. I guess that would be the expected result of doing something you detest. Ironically, all four of my children love to cook, proving that this must not be a gene-related matter.

My goal in feeding myself is to get something palatable in a bowl in the shortest amount of time. And thus the reemergence of the ever-delicious Top Ramen. I buy it by the caseload and have it three or four nights a week. I know, I know. Way too much sodium. But two minutes of boiling the water and two minutes of cooking, and, voila! Dinner.

I used to make salads several nights each week and ate the same salad for ten years, but finally my tolerance for it plummeted. I have found a rather painless new way to eat decently. Trader Joe’s has these wonderful bags of cut-up vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts (all of which I love). I put a bag of these into the microwave with a frozen TV dinner like Fettuccini Alfredo (amazingly, always on sale for something like “5 for $10”), and five minutes later I pull them out, mix them into a bowl and I’ve got a somewhat edible dinner.

I realize that I’m not an evolved food person. I like routine and consistency far too much. Change is an anathema to me, and I hate leaving my comfort zone. I know that I’m missing out on a lot of great food and accepting a certain melancholy mediocrity because of these traits, but if you have them, you understand how hard it is to escape them.

So as I settle in with my ten-thousandth bowl of steaming Top Ramen, the TV tuned to Jeopardy, I sit savoring the delicious flavor and the soft noodles, happy in the sameness that gives me comfort and fills my stomach. And keeps me out of the kitchen.

Gamble Garden was previously easy to overlook. Driving by on Embarcadero Road, the Palo Alto garden was hidden by an assortment of trees and a short green fence. Since 2019, a new watershed garden at the corner of Embarcadero and Waverley by designer Richard Hayden invites visitors into the little patch of horticultural paradise—2.5 acres, to be precise. The Edwardian-style house, where Gamble Garden is located, was built in 1902 and was once home to Edwin Gamble, the son of the co-founder of consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble. The three-story house was constructed for $6,039—the equivalent of about $180,000 today. Elizabeth Frances Gamble, one of Edwin Gamble’s four children and only daughter, returned home after attending college and discovered her passion for gardening. Upon her death in 1981, Elizabeth left the Gamble property to the City of Palo Alto. Today, over 300 volunteers continue to nurture the estate, where many families, artists and even dogs visit every day. Be sure to wander each path in the garden—there are plenty of hidden gems. Visiting is free. Check gamblegarden.org for updated guidance and hours.

words by Sheri Baer

While 2020 will be remembered for introducing a pandemic lexicon all its own, look back 100 years and the local talk ran to rum runners, prohis, bootleggers, speakeasies and moonshine. This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the 18^th Amendment becoming law, banning “the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” From 1920 to 1933, the wild and unruly Prohibition Era profoundly impacted life across the U.S. With the help of the San Mateo County Historical Association, PUNCH turns back the clock—capturing the lingo, the local legends and the lawlessness—to better understand how this infamous period played out on the Peninsula.

Caper (slang): A robbery or other criminal act.  

While the 18^th Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of “intoxicating liquors,” the ownership and home consumption of alcohol was still legal. Peninsula residents had the year between the ratification of the amendment and when it went into effect on January 16, 1920, to purchase a supply of alcohol to enjoy when the country went “dry.” The millionaires of the area made sure the wine cellars of their great estates were fully stocked. A portion of W. M.

Fitzhugh’s Menlo Park cellar included 141 cases of imported whiskey and 68 cases of wine, brandy and champagne.

The Ocean Beach Hotel, Miramar

What is now the Miramar Beach Restaurant was originally designed and built as a Prohibition speakeasy—complete with revolving kitchen cabinets and other secret compartments for hiding illegal liquor. The upstairs of the Ocean Beach Hotel served as the Bordello. Running the show was a red-headed madam named Maymie Cowley, aka “Boss,” and the roadhouse was raided numerous times for illegal liquor, gambling and prostitution.

When Prohibition started, thieves met the demand for alcohol by “capers” burglarizing the wealthy. In late February 1920, S. W. Morehead lost two cases of gin, two cases of whiskey and 10 gallons of wine from his Portola Valley home. Posing as laundry wagon drivers and gas meter readers, one gang stole $20,000 worth of liquor in the first six weeks of Prohibition. In a famous caper, a gang of nine robbers held Julien Hart’s Menlo Park household at gunpoint for several hours on March 2, 1922. One robber told a hostage, “We believe that this liquor should be put in general distribution, so that everybody gets a chance at it, and not let the rich have it all to themselves.”

As Prohibition continued, robbers targeted more than the wealthy. Hijackers stole alcohol seized by law enforcement agents and hooch smuggled by bootleggers. In December 1924, a Pescadero gang stole a $20,000 cache of whiskey hidden by bootleggers. The bootleggers invaded Pescadero and roughed up the residents until the missing liquor was found.

On the Lam (slang): Evading the police.

“San Mateo County is the most corrupt county in the state.” This assertion from the Hillsborough mobster Sam Termini in the 1930s reflected years of Peninsula residents disregarding laws on alcohol and gambling. The 18^th Amendment made the manufacture and sale of liquor illegal. Enforcement was difficult in San Mateo County where large parts of the European immigrant population believed drinking was a right. Other residents viewed Prohibition as an opportunity to make money or have some fun. Women joined the men drinking, smoking and gambling in illegal speakeasies or bars. Rum runners used the foggy coast to smuggle Canadian whiskey from off-shore ships. Throughout the county, everyday folk made moonshine.

The National Prohibition Act, known as the Volstead Act, made the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the Treasury Department responsible for the enforcement of Prohibition. The Treasury Department’s Prohibition Enforcement Unit had about 3,000 agents nationwide. They were known as “prohis.” In San Mateo County, these agents patrolled the beaches watching for rum runners and raiding stills. The Prohibition Enforcement Act, known as the Wright Act, made California police officers responsible for enforcing Prohibition laws. Many local police departments were small and not prepared for the demands of Prohibition. For example, South San Francisco had only four officers to police a community of 3,000 people. Despite numerous raids, the county was considered one of the “wettest” in the state.

SS Palo Alto, Aptos

Visitors to the Seacliff State Beach fishing pier near Aptos are always intrigued by the mostly-submerged remnants (now artificial reef) of the SS Palo Alto, a concrete tanker built during World War I. In 1930, the retired vessel was transformed into a docked party boat known as “The Ship,” with a casino and cabaret above deck—and one of Santa Cruz County’s most notorious speakeasies down below. Big bands of the day, including Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman, played in The Ship’s Rainbow Ballroom.

Moonshiner (slang): One who makes homemade alcohol.

The 18^th Amendment prohibited the manufacture of alcohol. All over the Peninsula, residents disregarded this law. Some European immigrants saw no need to discontinue making the beverages they were used to drinking. At a time when legitimate jobs paid 25 dollars a week, some found the money to be made by moonshining to be appealing. An experienced moonshiner could make a gallon of whiskey for 70 cents and get a return of 50 dollars at a speakeasy. Small distilleries flourished. Most were found in the basements of private homes. It was easy to get started as a moonshiner. Recipes could be found at local libraries. Ingredients such as grapes, hops, sugar, barley and yeast could be purchased in stores. Local newspapers advertised where one could buy equipment such as steam boilers, condensers and copper pipe needed for a still. Larger stills were hidden on farms or in local businesses.

During a 1924 raid on a San Bruno area ranch, the prohis uncovered a wholesale moonshine plant that possessed 5,000 gallons of mash and a double distillery that produced 125 gallons a day. In 1931, authorities discovered that the J. R. Soda Works in South San Francisco operated one of the biggest distilleries in California. Owned by the South San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, a spur line to the Southern Pacific Railroad was built at the factory’s loading ramp, which allowed it to supply alcohol to most of the Western states.

Some moonshiners were less skilled than others. Inexperience in production could lead to moonshine that was dangerous to one’s health. In 1921, Harold Johnson brought suit against three Portola Valley moonshiners claiming that their grappa had caused him a temporary loss of eyesight.

Moonshiners discovered that improperly run stills exploded. In 1928, a barn was destroyed when a 600-gallon still exploded in El Granada. Explosions such as that one drew the attention of authorities, leading to the confiscation of liquor, mash and equipment.

Rum runner (slang): A person bringing prohibited alcohol across borders.

With American wineries and distilleries officially closed, people saw a chance to make a fortune by smuggling alcohol. Rum runners filled their ships with whatever alcohol was in demand, especially Canadian whiskey. Many of the rum runners that anchored along the San Mateo County Coastside came from British Columbia. United States jurisdiction extended three miles, and later twelve miles, from shore. Large ships with illegal whiskey would anchor just outside the jurisdiction area on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coast, forming Rum Rows. From the Rum Row off San Mateo County, the alcohol was unloaded into coastal boats.

Some Coastside residents incorporated rum running in their daily jobs. One El Granada fisherman remembered taking his boat out in the afternoon to meet a small freighter that could carry 100 cases of alcohol from Canada. He could order a load of whatever he wanted—vodka, gin, scotch, bourbon or Old Crow—and be back to El Granada with his load in three hours. Often, the coastal boats landed in secluded coves. Bootleggers paid Coastside boys $100 to unload boats and load the bootleg onto trucks. While some of the liquor went directly to Coastside speakeasies, much more of it went to San Francisco.

Dry Times in Palo Alto   

When it comes to the prohibition of alcohol, the city of Palo Alto holds the Peninsula’s “driest” honors. Back in 1886, when Leland and Jane Stanford set out to found a university, they approached the town of Mayfield (now the area of Palo Alto’s California Avenue) about closing its saloons. After being turned down, they founded their own dry college city, Palo Alto (including downtown University Avenue), which legally banned all intoxicating liquors within a mile and a half of campus. Mayfield kept the liquor flowing, only to be annexed by Palo Alto in 1925. Up until, through and even after Prohibition ended, Palo Alto stayed the course—with the local government forbidding the sale of alcoholic beverages. In the 1930s, nearby East Palo Alto in San Mateo County stepped up to meet demand, and the area was nicknamed “Whiskey Gulch” by Stanford students who frequented its popular liquor stores and bars. The 1.5-mile ban officially stayed on the books for decades—and it wasn’t until 1971 that downtown Palo Alto served its first legal cocktail.

The Coast Guard was responsible for catching rum runners by sea, but only two Coast Guard cutters were stationed near the San Mateo County Coast. Often, the fast, well-armed ships of the rum runners evaded and outran the Coast Guard ships. On shore, law enforcement and bootleggers engaged in violent confrontations. In 1923, federal agent W. R. Paget led a raid against an operation at Año Nuevo Island. Armed with sawed-off shotguns, the agents fought a gun battle until the bootleggers ran out of ammunition. Even when law enforcement managed to catch bootleggers, judges gave light sentences. In South San Francisco, Officer Augustine Terragno pulled over a car for running a stoplight. He discovered 25-gallon containers of alcohol. Terragno reported that “all the judge did was fine him for running the light…worse, I was told to haul all the booze back to the Buick!” After that, he did not bother to stop bootleggers.

Speakeasy (slang): An undercover bar; an illegal drinking establishment.

Speakeasies on the Peninsula numbered in the hundreds. High-class speakeasies in hotels and restaurants provided fine food and entertainment, along with moonshine and bootleg whiskey. Located in barber shops, grocery stores, cigar stores and soft drink parlors, many “speaks” were much smaller. A password granted access to a small back room with a bar and perhaps some card tables and slot machines. Customers paid 50 cents a shot for moonshine and up to two dollars for whiskey.

While women rarely entered bars before Prohibition, everyday “dames” frequented the speakeasies. In addition to being regulars, there were “whisper sisters,” such as Maria Mori, who helped her husband operate a speakeasy at the Sanchez Adobe.

Speakeasy owners obtained their alcohol from several sources. Some proprietors, such as Manual Bernardo at the Beach Inn near Half Moon Bay, had their own stills. Also on the Coastside, both “Boss” John Patroni at Princeton and Jack Mori at Mori’s Point had private wharves near their speakeasies for the delivery of whiskey. While law enforcement agents did raid speakeasies, the raids were often unsuccessful. As members of the local community, the police officers often had good relations with speakeasy proprietors. Some law enforcement agents were known to have a drink at local speakeasies, and sometimes notify owners of upcoming raids. If a raid was successful, the usual sentence for the proprietor was a few months in county jail and fines up to $500. Small fines did little to discourage people from repeatedly breaking the law.

Repeal: The end of Prohibition.

President Herbert Hoover called Prohibition “a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.” However, instead of reducing crime, Prohibition increased it. In their selling of alcohol, gangsters set up nationwide networks. There was a general disrespect for the law, even among previously law-abiding citizens. During the 1930s, it became clear that Prohibition had failed to stop alcohol consumption. Additionally, as the Great Depression progressed, officials saw economic reasons to end Prohibition. A legal flow of liquor could be taxed. As he campaigned to be President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that it was “time to correct the ‘stupendous blunder’ that was Prohibition.”

Repealing the 18^th Amendment, the 21^st Amendment was ratified on November 7, 1933, and Prohibition officially ended on December 5, 1933. Locally, the repeal of Prohibition was marked by parties including the Drunks Dinner at Filoli in Woodside. William and Agnes Bourn, the owners of Filoli, “being sober” and infirm, did not attend, but Ida Bourn hosted the festivities for 20 prominent guests. Not everyone was happy about repeal. Earning $10,000 a week as a bootlegger, G. William Puccinelli of San Mateo called Prohibition “the greatest law that ever was.”

Get Your History Fix

A more detailed account of Prohibition on the Peninsula can be found in the Winter 2011 edition of La Peninsula at historysmc.org/la-peninsula. To dig deeper into SF Peninsula history, visit historysmc.org

The intertidal zone marks the series of moments when the ocean reveals her secrets in a deep minus tide. At Princeton Harbor by the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club, in the fogged-in grey of early morning light, Kirk Lombard already has his gear ready and his family in tow. He reminds his seven-year-old son, Django, how to hunt for clams. “Look for the deep holes where you can see a slit,” he advises. “That’s a mouth.”

Kirk points to a spot that would slip by the untrained eye. Django stomps hard and a shocking spurt of water flies up. “That’s where we dig,” he says confidently. Inserting his clam tube around the small hole, Django begins to suction the horse neck clam to the surface. He then presses his body to the wet sand and reaches in, pulling out the most unlikely of creatures. Its long neck protrudes from a wide, hard shell. “You can treat it like sushi,” Kirk’s wife and business partner, Camilla, explains, “or it makes a really great chowder.”

A little ways down the rocky, seaweed-strewn beach, their five-year-old daughter, Penelope, is doing her own foraging, taught by her father over many family excursions like this one. She proudly holds out a ghost shrimp, its see-through body shimmering in her hand. For this busy family, with a thriving Community Supported Fishery (CSF) business built on delivering sustainable seafood around the Bay Area, these are the precious moments when they connect to the wonders of the sea that have held them in thrall since childhood.

Originally from New York City, Kirk spent his boyhood summers with his grandfather in Santa Cruz, who fished for steelhead trout in the San Lorenzo River and nurtured Kirk’s love for foraging and fishing. Camilla grew up on the beaches of Santa Barbara as a surfer and junior lifeguard. Fate brought them together at the Odeon bar in San Francisco, where Camilla was bartending while she went to law school and Kirk’s band was playing. “On our first date Kirk took me to a beach in Pescadero,” Camilla recalls. “I had my French easel and I was painting while he was foraging for monkey-faced eel. It’s a nice metaphor for our ability to do our own things together.” Now, they’ve grown their compatibility and shared love of art, music and sustainable seafood into the business that supports their varied passions and makes use of their diverse skill sets.

Kirk began his career as a supervisor for the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, where he learned the elements of responsible fishing and built relationships with fishermen throughout the Bay Area. When he got laid off, he had more time to devote to his love of poke pole fishing and gradually learned the art of foraging some of the ocean’s less popular residents, like night smelt and horse neck clams. Descended from a long line of performers—his grandfather was an opera singer, his father performed on Broadway and his mother took voice lessons from Ethel Merman when she was a girl—Kirk has a powerful singing voice and plays the tuba, the harmonica and a homemade one-string. He started to wonder if he could put his unique skill sets of performing and foraging to use. “I was an actor in New York and I’d performed in many bands, but I was also passionate about the creatures in the intertidal zone,” Kirk reflects, as he peers out to sea. “What I really liked was communicating with the public and I began to experiment with giving walking tours. As soon as I started taking people out, I saw that this was going to work.” Kirk officially launched a series of foraging walking tours in San Francisco and Half Moon Bay, which led to his book, The Sea Forager’s Guide to the Northern California Coast.

The financial demands of a growing family dovetailed with a real need he observed during his tours. Dusting off his hands, Kirk explains, “At the end of all my tours, people would always say, ‘This is really interesting, but I don’t have time to do this myself. I want sustainable seafood, so what do I do?’” Kirk began to formulate the answer to that question. When his friend Kenny Belov, who runs a wholesale fishery, TwoXSea, at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, offered him space to work and seafood he could source to his exacting specifications, Kirk started a Sea Forager CSF based on the model of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) used by farmers. And Kirk ensured that the seafood didn’t just come with vague reassurances about sourcing and sustainability. Every fish provided by Sea Forager includes details about the boat, the captain and where the fish was caught.

Kirk’s workload ramped up so quickly that he couldn’t manage it alone. The time to create “a mom and pop fishmonger business,” as Camilla refers to Sea Forager, had arrived. “Seven years ago in February I quit my job, in March we had a baby and in August we started Sea Forager,” she recounts with a laugh. Kirk handles the fish and deliveries. From their Moss Beach home, Camilla takes care of customer service, marketing and event management, as well as singing and playing accordion in the Sea Forager official band, The Fishwives. It’s been a whirlwind time—that’s included the birth of their two children.

While many businesses have struggled during quarantine, Sea Forager has boomed. The increased demand for local products prompted the hiring of more workers to help Kirk process and deliver the seafood for their CSF. “People want to connect with their local food sources, whether it’s their local farm or their local fishermen,” Camilla points out. “I think, frankly, with COVID-19 people don’t want to feel like they’re going too far out of their geographical zone to source their food and it’s great to feel like they’re supporting their local community.” Even with this added pressure for locally sourced fish, Kirk and Camilla have remained committed to their specific brand of sustainability, which includes some creatures that their customers may not be used to preparing and eating.

Kirk and Camilla are intent on educating customers about why they need to add variety to their seafood diets and about how to prepare the fish they provide. Sea Forager has lively social media feeds where customers share recipes, and they host events where customers can interact with each other and the fishermen who provide their meals. They realize that everyone likes salmon, and they provide it, but they also sprinkle in some sea critters that may need more explanation. Camilla leans forward to clarify their mission, “In the context of the CSF, we turn people on to a lot of seafood they wouldn’t necessarily know what to do with—like night smelt, anchovies and sardines. This is all part of the push to get people to eat lower on the food chain, so they can have less mercury themselves but also have the benefits of the nutrients that seafood has to offer instead of always going after the fillets.” Kirk nods in agreement, adding, ”The small silvery schools of fish are the ones we should be eating if our primary concern is the continuing health of the ocean.”

Though Sea Forager events are temporarily suspended due to COVID-19, they look forward to restarting that part of their business when safety permits. In the meantime, their Facebook and Instagram feeds continue to provide customers with clever recipes and a deep sense of community. “We have a lot of love and a lot of people who feel connected to us,” Camilla says, pushing a strand of blond hair from her face. “Our greatest marketing tool is our customer base.”

For now, with the intensity of his schedule, Kirk doesn’t have a lot of time for the foraging that started it all. When he seeks out a low tide these days, it’s usually with one of his children, and more often, it’s about catch and release. He treasures the quiet moments when he can pass on his love of the intertidal zone and its creatures to his young children. Even in the hectic pace of days, both Kirk and Camilla find a deep-seated gratitude in what they’ve been able to create together. “We love Sea Forager,” says Camilla, smiling widely into the salty ocean wind. “It’s afforded us a life of being here—it’s the most you can ask for.”