As they do every year since the ’30s, the Lions and Rotary selected their Citizen of the Year this week. At a fun-filled luncheon at the historic Lion’s Club hall, Sapore’s very old Elio D’Urzo received the honor. He also catered his own event! The list of thoughtful and charitable efforts Elio provides to local churches, schools, seniors and others is long and distinguished. In November, Sapore will be celebrating its 25th year in B’game. During his typically modest short acceptance speech, Elio described Sapore as a “home”, not a “restaurant”. That’s how I feel when I walk in.
He also noted that he has now spent half of his life here and half in Italy but is finding English comes to him easier here than Italian does there! He’s working with previous CoY Mark Lucchesi on his accent. Good luck with that. Everyone has seen him talk with his hands like the picture below. Congrats, Elio.
Word on the street is that after several stunted attempts by the city to lease the old Sam’s Sandwich space in the old Greyhound Depot, a tenant has secured the lease. It’s a small space but having it sit empty for several years has been depressing. Anything we can do to keep our small-town feel is progress.
About 300 community members came together under a clear blue sky last week for the ribbon-cutting at our new Town Square. It’s a long story which you can revisit via the Post Office category here from the groundbreaking in 2021 all the way back to 2012. I thought Mayor Michael Brownrigg delivered an outstanding speech and Michael kindly gave me his detailed notes to excerpt here. Here are some very lightly edited highlights of that speech.
The history of Burlingame last 50 years is history of parking lots: buying and leveling our bowling alley, the old City Hall, and others to build parking lots to compete with malls. 15 years ago, with our downtown sagging, we realized it was not parking, it was vitality and activity that mattered. And those parking lots – bought as a way to enhance Burlingame — now looked a lot like underutilized assets.
In 2008/9, in the heart of the Great Recession, our city leaders challenged our community, let’s reimagine our downtown. Over the course of a couple of years and many, many meetings, a vision arose. It was the product of robust input from groups like Citizens for a Better Burlingame and the downtown BID, Planning Commission, community leaders, etc.
We now see so many fruits from that 2010 Downtown Plan: affordable housing, creative and efficient parking, expanding energy and retail over to Howard, enhancing Burlingame Avenue with wide sidewalks and more pedestrian amenities. And today, the cherry on top, our new Town Square.
There are so many people to thank. Neighbors like the Salmas and the Karps and the owners of Yves De Lorme, who have consistently leaned in. Other business owners like Janet and Carl Martin who worked hard to make Safeway a better project way back when and who care deeply about the entire fabric of our downtown. Safeway was the first salvo by Burlingame in terms of imagining a more pedestrian friendly, community oriented and vital downtown. And a shout out to Stanley Lo, who helped control the Post Office site after it was put on the market and then helped sell the site to a group of people who could honor the history and imagine the future, and to Dave Hopkins, a co-conspirator at Sares Regis without whose courage this project might never have materialized.
Michael Brownrigg
Burlingame Mayor (2026)
On the occasion of the opening of the Town Square, April 2, 2026
As I said, this is just an excerpt, and he thanked many more people before turning the podium over several other speakers. Hopefully this Instagram video will load properly for a taste of the proceedings. The story about moving the Post Office over the downtown culvert and then back is one for the ages and I can’t wait for the restaurant that is the last remaining bit of the project.
Michael told me last week that he would use last night’s city council meeting to publicly affirm what we have been hearing for a sometime–that he would not seek re-election this time around. He leaves quite a service legacy having been appointed to the Planning Commission in 2001 and joining the city council in 2009. As we have seen with other long-serving commissioners and council members, their institutional knowledge is incredibly valuable in subsequent projects. And they still get button-holed in the grocery aisle long after they are out of office. Congrats, sir.
The Chronicle’s local sightseeing tour guide/reporter, Peter Hartlaub, who grew up in B’game journeyed back to our little burg for a piece on Coyote Point. He has some fun little quips that we can enjoy here or you can click through for the whole article. It sounds like he grew up in Lyon-Hoag.
Coyote Point’s geography is similar to other Bay Area parks, a 670-acre shoreline promontory with a tree-covered hill, laid out a lot like Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro and the East Bay’s Albany Bulb. But the overall vibes are one of a kind, with the airplanes, massive picnic areas, tide pools, a colorful playground, a hidden zoo, oh, and bursts of audible gunfire.
It’s also a lesson for me: How the Bay Area things we grew up with that once felt routine, seem wild and mystical when you return with perspective. I was raised in Burlingame six blocks from Coyote Point, and thought this strange and versatile park was the norm. Biking through the entire thing for the first time in decades, I’m struck by how close I once lived to an open space unicorn.
From (Caltrain) I bike slowly east through a town I barely recognize, retracing most of my old 1980s Chronicle paper route and passing my childhood home — bought by my parents for $35,000 in 1970 — now mostly unrecognizable after a recent modern makeover.
After recapping the landfill in the 1880s that connected the island to the shoreline and the Pacific City fiasco, he mentions another long-gone landmark that we all miss as he bikes up the hill
I power up the first hill and sadly find no sign of the Castaway, a tiki-themed fancy restaurant with airport views, where we gathered for graduations and Mother’s Day. (It was bulldozed in 2007.)
As I’m leaving, I marvel at how much better this went than I feared. So much of my middle-class childhood on the Peninsula — every movie theater, drive-in, record store and favorite sandwich spot — has been swallowed by Silicon Valley. But this park is both preserved and objectively better than when I visited as a kid.
I bike back through my old neighborhood slowly, wishing I had a few more Chronicles to deliver. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Especially when it’s a half-century later and a special place still has some magic left.
Let’s see if we can keep as much of “the magic” as possible. It’s very tough to do, but as some city council woman said more than once, “You’ll miss it when it’s gone”.
In another Only-On-The Voice moment, my sleuthing has uncovered rare pieces of Burlingamia that merit being shared with the old timers in town. At the current site of Stella on the Avenew was a local pub called the Bit of England. Very English. Real English ales on tap (I seem to recall it had my favorite, John Courage, and Watney’s). It was far from upscale and that’s what we loved about it.
It closed about 30 years ago (looking for fact checking help here, old timers. Sir Paul? Mark Lucchesi?) Our buddies Jeff and Barbara Moore were long time B’gamers who eventually decamped for Maui. Jeff had managed to procure the original Bit bar stools and used them with his Tiki Bars in B’game and on Maui. They slipped through his fingers during a move, but he has reacquired them. At his recently completed Tiki bar he and I enjoyed a tipple and a seat on the original Naugahyde Bit of England stools. Anyone with memories of the Bit, please weigh in here. I’ll be chatting with the Historical Society to get a photo or two to add to the Tiki bar.
If you were paying even a little attention to city council and various commission meetings over the last twenty-plus years, you would recognize Pat Giorni by her gravelly voice, fluorescent vest and informed comments made to one and all. Pat passed away on December 7th after being bedridden for several years. That had to be hard for her since she was a ball of energy hosting parties, biking around town and button-holing people to offer her opinion(s).
I often find council and commission meetings to be like watching paint dry, but Pat had the patience to sit through them and offer public comment that was always very much on point even if it was ignored. She was a true activist and a motivation for many others to get involved to one extent or another. Count me among them. And if I wasn’t too involved, I trusted her take on things.
It wasn’t just B’game stuff either–Pat had an equal amount of insight on county issues. For all I know, she might have been a regular at county supervisor meetings as well. Transit, planning, parking, public funding, local businesses and helping them (she was a chef for years and it showed at her massive house parties) were all in her wheelhouse.
If she liked you, you knew it. And if she didn’t you could probably figure it out pretty quickly. She liked my wife and hosted her campaign kick-off party in 2009 (shown here with Jerry Deal in the background). It was something as being around Pat always was. RIP, dear.
It was fun seeing the half page spread in the SF Examiner about local luxury clothier Malouf's adding a San Francisco location on Sacramento Street focussed on womenswear. The journalist asked a nice set of personal questions that are enlightening even to locals who know Sam and Gloria. Just one example: at seven years old, Gloria wanted to be a doctor and Sam wasn't thinking about any profession, but knew he loved clothes even before he knew is dad owned a clothing store.
From Texas to B'game to EssEff. Congrats. It takes some grit and confidence to expand brick and mortar retail these days and we wish them the best. You can download this photo and zoom in for more insights.
As we wait for The LIttle Big Dig to start on El Camino it's worth delving into one of the useful things Caltrans did during the planning phase. They had to commission an historic inventory report on the buildings along the historic thoroughfare–at least the ones that are left after the teardown trend of the last 20 -30 years. All the way at the south end of town there are two distinctive buildings across from each other at the five-way, St. Catherine's intersection. They are known as "Mogies" after architect Mogens Mogensen who did a number of projects on the Peninsula as described here:
Mogen Mogensen (1920-1997) Was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He graduated in 1942 in Architecture from the Technical School of Copenhagen. Between 1942 and 1946 he worked in architectural offices in Denmark and Sweden. Mogensen had early success, winning awards for designs for a school in Malmo, Sweden in 1945, and a City Hall in Ulricehamn, Sweden a year later. He arrived in the U.S. in 1946 with the help of a great uncle and aunt who ran a dairy near San Luis Obispo. He quickly found a job with Wurster, Bernardi, Emmons in San Francisco, leaving them in 1947 for a two-year position as a designer with the David D. Bohannon Organization in San Mateo.
During this time, he became a licensed architect in California. From 1950 to 1952 he worked in several architectural offices in San Francisco and on the peninsula. In 1952 he returned as chief architect for David Bohannon. He opened his own office in 1956. His Bay Area practice consisted primarily of apartment buildings and condominiums although he also built private homes. Mogensen was also involved in master planning, office buildings, and commercial projects.
If you click through on the link you can see he designed the Adeline Apartments in Burlingame, the Ambassador Apartments in San Mateo, the Belmont Executive Center, and for the Bohannon Corp, the Hillsdale housing development and shopping center in San Mateo.
Here on the South end, the Mogie at 90 El Camino has been deemed historic in the report which is timely since the building has also gone up for sale for the first time that I can remember in the 34 years I have lived a block away. Disen Cai has the listing and it pops up on-line for $2.8M. We will revisit the other "Mogie" across the street–an angular apartment building–at another time. Here's the little Mogie gem:
The B'game Historical Society had standing room only on Wednesday at the Lane room for a presentation about the history of the Mendelson/Melendez production company and the Charlie Brown TV specials. Voice readers know the company is born and bred Burlingame and may recall when Lee Mendelson himself did a presentation back in 2013 here.
This time around Lee's sons, Sean and Jason, focused in on the music that accompanied the various TV specials. The driving force behind the music was local composer and jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi who passed away in 1976. After the sons did some archival digging in various places, the original tapes of the Peanuts music were located, remastered and repressed (on bio-vinyl no less!). It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown! is the current release. Originally recorded in the famous Wally Heider Studios in EssEff, it was the twelfth Peanuts score by Guaraldi. I won't attempt to tell the whole story that can be found in the liner notes, but Linus continues the proselytizing that began with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965.
The story Sean told about how the Christmas special came about was pure local gold. The TV sponsors (mainly Coca-Cola) had turned down another of Lee Mendelson's shows but offered him a chance to fill a Christmas slot if he could give them a script in a couple of days. He rushed back to his partner Bill Melendez and to Charles Schultz who pulled the script together over a weekend. Guaraldi put the music together and Lee added the lyrics on the back of a napkin. The Coke execs were unimpressed, but Lee told them to let their families decide if they liked it and the classic was born. That's the short version. To get the long version, you hadda be there.
We haven't addressed any changes on The Avenue recently although there has been bits of news and commentary. So here goes. Burlingame native turned San Franciscan, Peter Hartlaub of the SF Chronicle, did a piece this week titled "Nostalgia and progress are a tough balance. This Bay Area downtown gets it right." that was highly complementary of the San Mateo downtown. He likes the B Street closure and all of the restaurant choices down there. Regarding his hometown Avenue, not so much:
The Peninsula has changed so much since I grew up in Burlingame in the 1970s and ’80s that I sometimes wonder whether I imagined the whole thing.
All of my favorite South Bay movie theaters, comic book stores and sandwich shops are long gone. Marine World Africa USA’s dolphin shows and waterslides were replaced by Oracle headquarters. Main drag Burlingame Avenue turned from a haven of small businesses catering to the middle class to a Boulevard of Things I Can’t Afford.
On that "boulevard" the city has finally thrown in the towel on some of the pavers that are cute, almost nostalgic in a faux cobblestone sort of way, but a maintenance headache. The replacement project was scheduled to be complete last night:
Several downtown Burlingame Avenue intersections will be under construction from March 24 through March 27. At the intersection of Burlingame Avenue and Primrose Road and the intersection of Burlingame Avenue and Lorton Avenue, the City will remove existing pavers and install new asphalt concrete, which will reduce the maintenance required for the pavers. At the intersection of Burlingame Avenue and Park Road, pavers will be replaced both in the intersection and in the crosswalks.
I just walked through the busy core intersection of Primrose and The Avenew where a few loose pavers are hanging on. Maybe they stay for historic reasons? Or the project is just going slower than planned. Be on the asphalt alert. Right at that crossroad, Joe and the Juice is closing "for maintenance". The windows were being papered over this morning. I admit being surprised a coffee and juice place of that spacious size can survive on the Ave with all the coffee competition. It never looks even half full, but they say they will be back. Maybe Hartlaub will stop by Broadway on his next journey down the Peninsula?
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