The Burlingame Voice

Hillsborough shooting: Reward goes up

The Hillsborough PD are still looking for the shooter that hit an officer in their parking lot on Feb. 22nd.  We're a month in.  The state has stepped in with an additional $50K of reward money to add to the H'borough $100K.  Oddly enough the Comicle didn't mention the first $100K but did run the drawing of the suspect.  Here it is

AI: The County Full Employment Act of 2025?

Here is a classic entry for the Friends with Benefits category.  Our Supes, in their wisdom, have passed a resolution that requires county departments to "suggest new jobs to create" if positions are cut due to the implementation of AI.  Let that settle in for moment...or three.  I suppose one could use AI to suggest the imaginary jobs, but wouldn't that be circular illogic?

Our newest supe, Jackie Speier, is quoted in the Daily Post as saying, "There was an Industrial Revolution, now there's the AI revolution....We're going to have to adapt."  How about "We're going to have to adapt exploit"?  Voila.  Fixed.

If I had told any of my former bosses over 40 years in the Real World that I knew of a way to do the same or more work with less resources, but I wanted to "create" some new positions to make up for the savings, I would have been laughed out of the building.  If you were thinking we might be moving towards Adult Supervision down in RWC, you might want to "create a new sentiment" to replace that old, tired out one.

Revisiting the '06 Quake in style

Today, April 18, at 5:12 am is the anniversary of the Big One that hit EssEff in 1906.  The festivities at Lotta's Fountain will take place as usual on Market Street, but this year there will be a special attraction from B'game.  I happened to be at an event at the Candy Store last night where it was announced that the 1906 Locomobile Model H seven passenger touring car that lives at Candy Store will be fired up and driven to Lotta's Fountain to join the remembrance.

It cruises comfortably at 40 mph, so the owner will only have to leave around 4am after he lights the carbide head lamps.  How fun!  Here it is.

Panthers invade Oracle Park

I wish I had known about this game ahead of time, but thanks to John Horgan I get to regret not being there.  Horgan writes:

Tyler Jamieson got a dream job last weekend at Oracle Park in San Francisco, at least for a few hours. He was the lead public address announcer for a high school baseball game between San Bruno’s Capuchino and Burlingame. Jamieson is the longtime P.A. voice of the latter prep program at Washington Park in Burlingame. The Mustangs and Panthers played against each other last Saturday at the Major League Baseball venue as part of a Giants’ promotion. Capuchino won, 1-0. Jamieson, as always, was in fine form.

"Stats" Jamieson is an institution at Washington Park for BHS baseball games doing the introductions, playing the music, and keeping the scorebook.  He must have had a blast at Oracle!

B Street Books comes to the Avenew

B'game continues to have two vibrant downtowns.  Broadway and the Avenue retail spaces aren't "full", but both districts appear healthy to me.  In another sign of how attractive the Ave is, San Mateo's B Street Books is moving to the west end of the Ave into the space of the former piano store.  I have wondered how a shop like Joe and the Juice could survive in a pretty big space on coffee sales, but I think B Street is quite capable of bringing bookselling back to the Ave.

They had a sixteen-year run in San Mateo, on B Street of course, so there is a built-in customer base that will like the Ave as much as B Street -- or more.  I hope I'm right and welcome to B'game.  Now the B in B Street Books can stand for B'game.

 

City of Tom (junior)

I stopped by the Easton library this week.  Not for a book, but to check in on Tom Jr.  Regular readers will recall the 2007 controversy over cutting down Tom the Tree  (now Tom Sr.)  Refresh your memory here although you may be depressed by the "eucs roam free" bit as it is about to end for all but 9% of them.

As you can see below, Tom Jr. is doing pretty well.  He is on the left next to one of his father's younger buddies.  TJ has grown to about 18" in diameter at waist height and looks quite healthy.  Thank goodness.

You may have also gotten this notice in the mail this week from the City if you are on a theme street or close to certain addresses.  It's written is a vague manner that is a bit unsettling.  Perhaps that is a good strategy to get people to look.  "Removal of private protected tree(s)?  Excessive pruning?  Here is the link shown on the card.  Lots of tree news, fellow huggers.

Peanuts and Vince Guaraldi in B'game

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.

Gov. Newsom sends The Voice a cell phone

Our governor has been busy trying to polish his record lately by being "out there" talking to people who disagree with him (he likes to call it "dialoging").  He started a second podcast that is offering guest appearances to such people as a sign of openness.  He's doing podcasts with other podcasters as well.  It's almost like the governorship is a part-time job.  His latest sign of "dialoging" came about as reported by the LA Times

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said the governor has been mailing cellphones to chief executives of the top 100 California-based companies with his phone number programmed into the contacts since November in an effort to “connect more directly” with business leaders in the state.

Though many corporate chief executives probably did not need the governor to send a phone in order to reach him, his aides described his outreach as a gesture to get the attention of business leaders and show that he’s interested in their experience in California.

“Some CEOs have been surprised,” Salladay said. “Others we haven’t heard from yet and we’re heard from some who have communicated with the governor. It’s about information gathering about businesses in California and how they’re doing.”

That was last week.  The governor appears to be broadening his outreach again by reaching out directly to smaller media outlets.  Imagine my surprise when FedEx dropped off my very own Newsom burner phone pre-programmed with his number over the weekend!  It's a bare bones phone but it did come with a charger in case our conversations run longer than a cheap battery's life.  I won't get right on the horn with Gavin as I imagine the first 100 CEOs are taking up quite a bit of his time.  It will probably be best to wait a couple of weeks, but the "dialog" should be valuable.  Can you say High Speed Fail?  Reservoir?  What reservoir?  Stay tuned!

Fun with economics and the SF Examiner

I pick up the SF Examiner along with the other local papers when it's in the box.  It's a short eight page read in most issues and not a lot different in perspective than the SF Comicle.  So, you wouldn't expect to see some supply-side economics--that of the dismissed "trickle down" or "voodoo" variety-- in the Examiner.  My guess is they didn't even realize it Thursday when writing "Medicaid, SNAP cuts could cost California 140,000 jobs".   The lead reads

The federal budget plan directs the committees that control Medicaid and Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program spending to find a combined $1.1 trillion in cuts over 10 years to help offset trillions in tax cuts — and the report finds the resulting losses would hit California the hardest.

The first bit of fun with economics is to correct the misstatement "to help offset trillions in tax cuts".  Tax rates get cut (or in this case, lower rates simply don't expire and revert upwards).  What happens to tax dollars collected after that depends on many factors, not all negative, but that is a topic for another day.  The article starts down the trickling path thusly

Such businesses would see their revenue shrink, which would trickle down to their employees further in the supply chain, across food production, farming and medical equipment manufacturing.  As firms would have to reduce salaries, staffing, or goods and services to make up for the losses, consumer habits would change too, reducing the amount state and local governments are able to collect in taxes, the report finds.

Additionally, nearly 140,000 California jobs would be lost in directly related fields such as agriculture, food processing, pharmacy and nursing, and indirectly related fields such as retail and manufacturing. The state’s gross domestic product would suffer a projected loss in 2026 of $17 billion.

All of this sounds dire.  One domino falling after another.  The Examiner finds it problematic because it's Federal (i.e. taxpayer) dollars that are disappearing.  But what is the difference if it were private sector dollars declining?  Businesses burdened by over regulation, crazy licensing and labor rules and high tax rates suffer the same consequences, minus the skim at each level of the government trough.  Will the tax-and-spend crowd notice the similarity at some point?

A trillion dollars is a lot of money anyway you look at it--even spread over 10 years.  Will getting some semblance of fiscal stability in the federal budget, deficit and debt be good in the long run?  We don't have a lot of choice given the recent trajectory.

Avenew update: Bye bye pavers

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?

Dunkin' on Caltrans and El Camino...again

It's the second biggest disgrace in B'game after the Broadway non-grade separation.  We know the Big Dig is coming to El Camino, but that will take years to complete so why is the road surface So Bad?   Former B'game city council candidate Steve Duncan is as outraged as I am.  His letter to the editor of the Daily Post is on the nose:

Dear Editor,

On a recent visit to Cabo, Mexico, I noticed that most streets are in better condition than our El Camino Real, Burlingame's state road.  Some so simple and basic as filling a road hole doesn't get done.  It's basic maintenance.  Calls to Caltrans, public works and other officials have resulted in nothing!

Meanwhile, drivers are dodging various moon holes and trying to prevent automobile damage.  The they have to worry about empty double-attached SamTrans buses travelling close to every 30 minutes.  Mexico is better at basic road maintenance than our Caltrans.

Residents, taxpayers, drivers, call Caltrans and your elected representatives.  Send them your automobile repair bills.

Steve Duncan

Burlingame

Steve is 100% correct.  The road is terrible and getting worse.  The right-most tire lane is bad due to the pounding from the buses and the whole surface is suffering from so many heavy EVs going back and forth (and not paying any gas tax for road maintenance).  What happened to tax "equity"?  Sending your repair bills to Caltrans is not as easy as you might think.  What's it gonna take to get a little basic maintenance?

Treehugger: Tale of two maples

Yesterday was a brilliant Spring B'game day.  Coupled with the lovely time change things are looking up in the yard.  Here is an early Spring treehugger post showing the difference between two of my Japanese maples--planted right next to each other, but leading two entirely different lives at the moment.  The green one on the left has been fully leafed out for more than a week.  The one on the right will eventually be red.  It turns out that for some reason the green ones lead the way, and the red ones take much longer.

I'll have another Spring treehugger post when I find something amazing around town.  In the meantime, the birds are happy too.  Yesterday we had house finches, Bewick's wrens, Anna's hummingbirds, Mourning doves, and Chestnut-backed chickadees making a racket.  Happy Spring.