The Burlingame Voice

Rudy Benton, RIP

During the locked down, distracted days of the pandemic, the passing of Rudy Benton slipped by--not unnoticed, but not celebrated either.  That time has come and his daughter, Kathryn, notes this on Facebook

For those of you who knew Rudy Benton aka Mr. Benton, aka Mr. B, my dad, we are having a Celebration of Life for him on June 5th in San Pedro Valley Park, Pacifica.  He taught physical education McKinley, Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Hoover, Franklin and many more schools as well. And of course he had his local Burlingame TV show "Moving with Rudy Benton".

The full SF Chronicle obituary is here and notes

"Mr B" has moved on to the big multi-purpose room in heaven from which he will continue to inspire all, no matter their abilities, to keep moving, to never smoke or do drugs, and always put everything back neater than you found it!  (Ed: and the admonition to "go to college")

For 46 years Rudy taught his own unique version of Physical Education. First, for ten years in Brisbane, CA, and then for 36 years in Burlingame where the emphasis would be on non-competitive sports and no activity where a student would have to wait their turn.  Rudy would spend many an evening planning activities for his classes. He was particularly famous for designing obstacle courses themed around movies, geography, holidays, Olympics etc.

RIP Rudy -  March 22,1937 - July 30,2021

B'game History of Auto Row

Burlingame has been synonymous with car dealerships for as long as anyone can remember.  The marques that have been and continue to be sold here are legendary and the sales taxes the city collects are important contributors to our town's finances.  The total runs about $1.2 million per quarter--the highest of any category.  Even more interesting is the history of how we became known for our Auto Row which you can learn about from an expert this coming Sunday, Feb. 13th at 2pm.  At the Lion's Club hall in Washington Park, the Burlingame Historical Society is presenting its first live meeting in two years.

Society member, classic car enthusiast and long-time Burlingame Auto Row salesman Richard Griffith will present Tales from Auto Row. Using many historic images from the Society’s collection, Richard will discuss why one of the first auto rows in California was in Burlingame and how Auto Row has evolved over the last century. With many decades of experience, Richard has tales to tell! This is a presentation car lovers will not want to miss!

Richard's knowledge of all things car-related stems from his involvement with classic Hudsons, BMWs, Porsches and Audis--the later two marques he sold at Rector for, well, we'll let him tell you how long.  He's a trusted advisor on makes, models, values, and trouble-shooting as well as the go-to historical repository of our important local businesses.  I'm expecting some insights into cars that live in The Candy Store, the local Concours d'Elegance, and all of the cool brands that have come and gone here.

The presentation is free to the general public and, of course, the Society realizes there is a football game starting at 3:30 so they promise to finish by 3pm.  Bring your mask.

Farewell to Sixto's

One of my favorite B'game restaurants is closing to be replaced by another local stalwart moving to bigger space.  I like to commemorate places that created memories so years from now we can easily remember.  Like La Pinata, Chicken Chicken! and Yanni's, Sixto's is one of those places--in fact, it is the second one at the same location; residing in the old Bit of England space.  After "The Bit", it went through changes as the Tavern Grill (with awesome music) and Paragon before it became Sixto's.  I spoke to Teresa Lindhartsen who is one of the Sixto's and Alana's co-owners along with Francesca about Sixto's closing sometime this month.  While they are tiptoeing towards retirement, Alana's will continue as it has for 29 years.  That's a heckuva run.

Stella Alpina Osteria will be moving over from Chapin Ave. after a remodel so the tradition will continue.  As I was taking the photo below, a friend walked by who had not heard the news.  He had his first date with his lady friend at Sixto's and they have been regulars for the margaritas ever since.  Those are the memories I'm talking about.  Personally, I will miss the shrimp fajitas the most.  The good news is that with the current staffing shortages, the Sixto's staff should have no problem finding work.  To everyone involved, I say gracias.  Fare thee well.

Feb. 19 update:  Yesterday was the last day for Sixto's.  I went on Thursday night and it was packed--lots of sentimental thoughts all around.  Here are the much beloved  shrimp fajitas!

 

BSD: 50 Years of Music Instruction

Doing anything successfully for 50 years merits notice, and the SF Chronicle has provided a nice write-up on Carol Prater's long career teaching music to B'game students.  You can read the whole piece here but a couple of my favorite bits are:

On a mid-November day in 2021, Prater smiled at her band and cued the first notes of “Jingle Bells,” complete with the squawks and squeaks that have peppered her entire professional life.  These fourth- and fifth-graders are likely among the last of an estimated 25,000 students Prater will have taught music to during her 50-year career in the Peninsula city’s public schools. She’s leaning toward retiring — but isn’t firm about it.  (I added the bold :-)

“I just don’t know about 51 ...,” Prater said with a laugh after a group of Roosevelt Elementary kindergartners had filed out of her music room after singing and dancing with her. Her husband, Doy Prater, who was also a music teacher in the district, retired years ago.

And a good testimonial is worth its weight in gold...

Phil Grenadier was one of her first students to hear them when he was in the fourth grade in 1972. He is now a professional jazz trumpet player in New York, touring and recording, and remembers how “Mrs. Prater” saw something in him.  “She struck me as a young lady back then,” he said, realizing 50 years has passed for both of them.  She taught him to read music, helping him understand the difference between 16th, eighth and quarter notes with her mantra: “Mississippi, candy, Coke.”

Gotta love that little timing trick.  If you click through be sure to note that BCE apparently has a new name, and we also have a new school (Jefferson) that I am not familiar with.  Congrats on 50, Carol, don't rush into any decision on next school year!

Planting Trees: Official and Guerilla-style

The SF Comicle actually provided some value yesterday with a lengthy piece about a guerilla-style oak tree advocate in Oakland.  Here are a couple of good excerpts

Not long after a storm, Tim Vendlinski can be found in parks or small patches of grass around Oakland with a shovel and a few dozen acorns or oak seedlings in hand. He grabs his gardening tools from the trunk of his car, and with the swiftness of someone who has planted thousands of oaks in his life, he gets to work.  “How can you have a city named Oakland that doesn’t have any freaking oaks in it?” Vendlinski said.  His efforts represent a vigilante approach to urban forestry — a form of guerrilla gardening that is often at odds with the policies and standards of the city of Oakland’s tree supervisors. Both recognize the value of oaks, but they don’t always agree on where the oaks should go or how they should be maintained.

Oak trees are particularly important features of both urban and rural landscapes for several reasons, said Angela Moskow, an information network manager with California Oaks, a California Wildlife Foundation project focused on preserving the state’s oak trees.  Oaks foster enormous biodiversity — perhaps more than any other tree variety in California, sustaining more than 100 species of mammals, 170 species of birds and 4,000 species of insects, according to California Oaks.  Oaks are particularly good at sequestering carbon, both from the air and the ground.

I know the coastal live oak in my front yard has grown from 4' tall to 40' in the last 30 years and feeds a LOT of squirrels.

Oakland’s master street tree list, the list of trees approved to be planted on city sidewalks and medians, includes 59 tree species. Of those, eight are oaks. Only four of the trees on the list are native to Oakland, Vendlinski said, calling the list “horrific.”

Which leads me to back to B'game.  The city newsletter noted that

The Parks Division is in the process of planting 162 City trees throughout Burlingame in planter strip areas, tree lawns, and parks. The species of trees being planted will include red maples, eucalyptus Citriodoras, Chinese flame trees, crepe myrtles (Tuscarora), magnolia (Little Gem and Samuel Sommers), elms (Pioneer and Accolade), sycamores, Chinese pistaches, and Trident maples. This is the last of three plantings that will happen this year.

We got four of the 162 newbies on my street this week and I love them.  If you are interested in the "politics of trees" click through and read the whole article about what should go where, how it should or should not be watered, etc.  We live in a designated City of Trees regardless of whether SF wants to strangle our water supply or not. 

Kaiseki in B'game

The Comicle restaurant critic, Soleil Ho, ventured down the Peninsula to lil ole B'game for some Japanese food and was impressed.  Here Sunday piece notes

For a long time, Kaiseki Saryo Hachi had the air of a secret — a restaurant that existed only in hushed whispers among those in the know. A pandemic-born pop-up with Michelin cred, it didn’t exist on any map. You had to text the owner directly to get a reservation and order the menu you wanted in advance, though there wasn’t an obvious menu anywhere online. And it was hosted in a ramen shop in a strip mall in Burlingame, sandwiched between a yoga studio and a sports memorabilia shop.  (That would be Lefty's Sports)

A precursor to modern tasting menus, kaiseki is an elaborate, multicourse style of Japanese cooking that centers seasonal ingredients and aims for a steady balance of color, texture and various cooking techniques. Only a few restaurants here, including Ranzan in Redwood City and Wakuriya in San Mateo, are dedicated to this genre.

I've dined at Wakuriya up in the shopping center in the San Mateo highlands Crystal Springs Shopping Center, but had not heard about our B'game option.  Ho writes

When I finally secured a reservation in July, I faced a procession of intricate, summery dishes, a $200 per person menu with 10 courses that impressed the whole way through. Eating here is intimate: just one seating a night, with just a dozen or so seats in the cafe-like dining room.  It’s hard to feel too serious when you can see people stroll past the windows, pumpkin spice lattes in hand, which can make eating here feel more comfortable for people who don’t love the pomp of fine dining. I think the ambience adds to the charm. Owner Yuko Nammo carries out each dish herself, while collaborator and husband Shinichi Aoki mostly stays in the kitchen during service.

Click through to the full article that describes the food so you can decide if you are up for $200 pp or not.  With this much press, you may not be able to get in for a while.

Broadway Nightlife Returns

Back in the pre-pandemic era, Broadway was slowly starting to have some musical entertainment in the evenings.  We saw Il Piccolo do some events and hoped that more would follow, but Covid shut that down with everything else.  The Par 3 restaurant at the Coyote Point golf course was first to dip their toes in the aural pond as we noted here.  Now the Broadway Grill has established a regular schedule of jazz on Thursdays from 7-9pm, live piano on Fridays and live guitar most Saturdays (5-8pm).

The good news is that the sad little balcony stage that used to house the bands has been abandoned for a nice ground floor space with open windows along Capuchino Ave.  With wide spacing of the indoor tables you can enjoy a much better menu and plenty of elbow room while you eat and listen.  I'm sure the parklet diners were able to enjoy it as well.  The owner, Ziggy Dzikaras, is on the right track and I hope he is very successful.

Here is the San Francisco Quintet with vocalist Darlene Langston doing their thing last night and I hope they become regulars on Thursdays.

Living the Jazz Dream in B'game

I recently met one of the coolest cats in town.  He's an accomplished alto sax player, the artistic director of the Manly Jazz Festival in Australia and a live/streaming promoter.  And he's doing it all from B'game!  Andrew Speight is a whirlwind of energy and what people like to call resilience these days.  Persistence fits his passion for jazz. He's turned his living room into a little jazz club complete with a grand piano, lighting, amps, and everything one needs to stream shows on his Facebook page which he has done every Sunday afternoon for more than a year.

A few people get to see the shows live and I was lucky enough to fall into an invitation.  Andrew has the connections to bring in name artists (Vince Lateano, Smith Dobson, Sylvia Cuenca were all there playing) and they are chomping at the bit to play just like many of us are chomping at the bit to listen--since April as shown here.  We lost the Savannah Jazz club in San Carlos to the lockdown, but Andrew has created a private version that feels about the same.  Check out his Facebook page for the streams every Sunday at 5pm and a special Saturday night gig on July 24th at 8pm.

Now that the Covid restrictions are off we have the opportunity to start seeing more live music in town.  That has been a challenge for B'game well before the pandemic, but it feels like the appetite is there now and the city entertainment permits can start being issued again, so I'm thrilled to know we have a professional in town with similar hopes and dreams.  I wish my living room looked like this sometime.

It's-It Goes East

The Chronicle picked up a story about our very own ITS-IT ice cream confection starting to be sold on the East Coast.  Here's their take with the key correction

It’s-It, the San Francisco Burlingame ice cream treat little known outside the Bay Area, is invading the East Coast for the first time.  “A taste of the West Coast is making ITS way to the East Coast,” It’s-It Ice Cream announced in a post on its Facebook page earlier this month. The company likes to spell the name of its most-popular product in all capital letters, as if screaming for ice cream.

Since It’s-Its are just starting their assault on the East Coast, it’s unclear how many enthusiasts will be won over. But judging from the reception on Facebook, former Bay Area residents are clamoring for a frozen taste of the region. Dozens of people — from Alabama, Iowa , North and South Carolina and other states — posted requests to sell It’s-Its in their vicinities.

It’s-Its have been around since 1928, when George Whitney scooped some vanilla ice cream between two freshly baked oatmeal cookies, squished them together and dipped the ice cream sandwich in dark chocolate, It’s-It says on its website.  It’s-Its have developed an enthusiastic group of followers that not only buys the sandwiches in bulk (at factory stores now closed by the coronavirus) but buys merchandise including hoodies, caps, T-shirts and onesies and turns the labels into crafty light-switch plates.

I stopped by the Factory Store on Burlway Rd. just north of the Hyatt and directly abutting 101 to snap this photo.  Note the sandwich on the rooftop (upper right).

"The Problem With Spending Time in Burlingame is....

....you just don't want to go anywhere else."

So says Nate Pfaff who has created the best video tribute to life in our little burg you are likely to ever see.  Find it here on YouTube.  Exceptional work!