While enjoying the bands at Burlingame on the Avenue this year I noticed that the long-awaited Old Post Office restaurant in the old post office is hiring. It also has the liquor license application filed so we must be getting close.
The little sign telling people to stay off the beautiful lawn was promptly and widely ignored all weekend.
I’m very supportive of the effort to bring music and other events to our new Town Square. It’s perfectly located to bring more life to our city center–if things go off as advertised which isn’t happening consistently. Thursday was the latest challenge. A ukelele band was advertised on the sandwich board and in the Daily Journal’s very helpful weekly schedule of events that runs most days. Start time 4pm which would have allowed people at the Farmer’s Market to enjoy some uke. It was also the DBID Walk with Wine event. Even better. The problem was no band. People were peering at the sandwich board, looking at their watch or phone and moving on by 4:20. Back in June a band was cancelled because Music in the Park was scheduled for the same day. Having two shows on the same day isn’t a deal killer. Last minute cancellations and no shows won’t help bring in an audience.
Barracuda Sushi is doing its part to add some entertainment to the Avenew with comedy, game night and last night’s live jazz at the front of the restaurant with The Birds. I wasn’t familiar with the band–a quintet of Aragon High School kids–with a front line of alto and tenor sax, hence the name referencing Charlie Parker. They did a credible job on mostly mid-tempo standards.
It’s really fun to see the latest Gen Whatever get into jazz and I hope to see The Birds around town regularly whether at the upcoming B’game on the Avenue (it’s probably too late for that) or Burlingame Live (Oct. 1-4) or on the Town Square. Barracuda is billing itself as the new Barracuda, but it looked the same to me and the chef’s choise sashimi was choice. Here are The Birds:
KCSM Jazz 91.1 celebrated its summer concert festival on campus on Saturday. It was the 20th year of filling the area in front of the library with great jazz, blues, samba et al on the first Saturday of June. I always put it on my calendar right away. We had some wind and a chilly cloud cover for about an hour in the mid-afternoon, but otherwise bright sunny and fun.
Young Nathan Tokanaga from Belmont is back from his freshman year in NYC and has formed a new quartet for the summer. He’s a rising star– not just in Bay Area jazz– and has added the tenor sax to his talents. Long-timers Tuck & Patti followed. They’ve been playing for more than 40 years, and it showed. The Latin session followed with Roger Glenn’s Ensemble with Ray Obiedo sitting in. Roger claimed Ray taught Carlos Santana everything he knows and the guitar tone was familiar.
Things picked up steam with a tribute to Miles Davis on his 100th birthday from a group assembled for this show from top shelf musicians called “Miles Smiles” featuring Essiet Essiet, David Sanchez, Edward Simon, Eddie Henderson, and KCSM DJ and drummer Akira Tana. It doesn’t get much better than that, but the closer more than held her own. 35-year-old saxophonist Vanessa Collier is now out on her own after touring with Joe Louis Walker for years and she brought the event to a rousing, blues-driven close. Here she is.
The first of what I hope will be many bands played at our new Town Square last night. They were greeted by the Burlingame Breeze which unfortunately is not an umbrella drink. Bert’s Brew, featuring local bassist and former city councilmember Stephanie Lee, ran through a very fun variety of classic rock covers, some Calypso and some Reggae, mon. “Suntan Man”, who many would recognize from his busking on his tenor sax on the Avenew (along with his persona tanning sessions all over downtown), joined in from the audience on Girl from Ipanema.
The Burlingame Breeze made for two distinct experiences. In the sunny section in front of the Old Post Office things were quite pleasant. In the shade where the band was set up and nearby seating, things were less toasty. Future bands should note that the Breeze means they should bring their full PA set-up and layers of clothing. The weather and some confusion over the starting time made for a smaller audience than I expected. The sandwich sign with all of the upcoming shows listed a 5pm start, but the band started at 5:30 despite having set up early. I’ll try to get some clarity from Park & Rec on the start times which are variable (today’s start is listed as 4pm). There are worse places to while away a half hour.
I noticed the lack of an actual stage/bandstand during the Grand Opening but did not mention it in that post. Now that live music has started the lack of any staging is noticeable (even 10-12 inches makes a difference). It just doesn’t feel the same without a bit of a lift. Perhaps there is some budget left over to rectify this before Burlingame on the Avenue arrives on August 15-16 and the Square gets its real debut. All in all, we are off to a great start on a much-needed addition to the downtown scene.
The newish SF Standard is breaking through the SF Comicle news cycle with some different reporting and a conversational style. I get a daily email and click through to interesting pieces which, so far, have been free. They gave a two-thumbs-up to the changes happening in Menlo Park regarding housing and downtown vibrancy especially regarding the restaurant scene. Under this headline
How a sleepy Peninsula suburb became the Bay Area’s hottest homebuying market
The Standard notes some interesting things about MP’s Menlo Oaks neighborhood re-development that contrast with B’game.
The small, tree-lined enclave is pocked with active job sites. Foundations have been poured where modest ranch homes once stood. The transformation has been swift and, for builders and sellers, wildly lucrative. Home values in Menlo Oaks are at all-time highs, according to Zillow, driven by an influx of luxury developers rebuilding the neighborhood house by house.
The typical home is just shy of $3.2 million, a 4.2% increase over the pandemic-era peak. It’s the biggest price pop across the entire Bay Area. And Menlo Oaks has plenty of company. Of the seven Bay Area neighborhoods currently at their highest-ever values, five are in Menlo Park, according to Zillow’s data.
It’s hip to be square, at least for home builders. Menlo’s flat, right-angled lots are easy to build on, and the city’s planning process is fairly straightforward by Bay Area standards. A developer who gets one design approved can build others like it fairly quickly.
Most of the suburb’s housing stock is post-war, meaning demolishing a building won’t bring the same preservationist outrage as tearing down a Victorian. (Or a mostly original Arts & Crafts bungalow, Mission style, Tudor, Eichler or French Normandy as we have in B’game)
“The good part about having kind of uninteresting architecture is that no one minds,” said Sotheby’s agent Chris Iverson. “‘Oh, you knocked down a ranch house and built a modern farmhouse? OK.’”
The piece highlights one big developer, Thomas James Homes, that has been very active in Menlo Park (more than 50 projects). I see them scraping the occasional house here in B’game too. But the major difference is the commercial uptick in MP.
The demographic shift (meaning Boomers selling); Springline’s importation of San Francisco brands like Burma Love, Che Fico, and Barebottle Brewing; plus cultural events at the Guild Theatre, bring a “daily energy” that makes the city feel vibrant well beyond the workday.
We could use some of that culinary uplift and the Guild Theatre is a nice venue with some fun entertainment that we desperately need, but at the end of the day maybe we’re better off not attracting the scrapers.
Although I am a huge music fan I don’t listen to much choral music outside of church. Upon hearing that there would be an interfaith choir concert at St. Catherine’s on Sunday, I was intrigued and had nothing else to do during our second rainfall of the Fall. What a pleasant surprise the concert proved to be! It was a delight from the opening, somewhat atonal (in a good way) organ solo emanating from the big pipes in St. Cat’s choir loft to the four-choir rendition of Oh Happy Days as the closer.
I learned that this was the 16th annual concert by the North Peninsula Interfaith Choir. They underestimated how many people would show up such that they were out of programs when I entered so pardon the inexact names of the choirs. St. Paul’s Episcopal church and St. Catherine’s Catholic church represented B’game. San Mateo was represented by the Congregationalist church and the Church of Latter-Day Saints’ choirs. Here’s what it looked like when they all combined for the closer.
Yesterday was the second of four consecutive days of music on the Avenue with three bands each day. I stumbled upon the stage yesterday morning and that lead me to figure out what was happening later in the day. I wasn’t alone in my serendipitous listening as I watched Sheryl and the Pretenders and Red Hot and the Saltines perform. About a dozen friends stopped by to say hi and most of them also stumbled into the event either that day or the prior day. So here’s your PSA about today and tomorrow. The event is hosted by the City and the Chamber of Commerce whose Event calendar is here.
In chatting with Mayor Peter Stevenson, we agreed that by next year the “town square” should be complete and we can move the stage off the street and get better acoustics than the solid wall of the Apple store. Both bands were very good. Red Hot is a female singer from Millbrae and she and the Saltines covered everything from Seals & Croft to The Who. Here’s them near the end of their set as dusk set in.
With lovely B'game weather on a Friday afternoon, wine lovers and those who just like a good party were out in force for "A Walk With Wine". The DBID is to be congratulated on a huge success. 30 merchants poured wine and chatted up the attendees all of whom were in fine spirits. I went into several establishments that I pass all the time but had never visited. That's the point. Penflora Designs, Margaret O'Leary and Del'Oliva all made positive first impressions. There were bands at Coconut Bay for the check-in and under the pergola across from the Apple store. That band, called Edgehill, was composed of all local parents who live on or around Edgehill Dr. and apparently have kids at BIS. They were good and I would have loved to hear more, but the clink of wine bottles called further up the Avenew. Seeing lots of locals gave me a "It's still a small town" boost. Here's Edgehill. If anyone knows more about them, please add a comment.
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.
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