The Burlingame Voice

Retro Cool Ice Cream in B'game

Mercury News reporters Linda Zavoral and Jessica Yadegaran put on some miles (and possibly some pounds) while building a list of the 10 beloved Bay Area ice cream shops, from the classic to the eclectic.  From Orinda and Pleasanton to San Jose to B'game where they noted Preston's celebrated its 75th anniversary last year:

RETRO COOL: Preston’s Candy & Ice Cream, Burlingame

The vintage signs outside and the checkerboard floor inside are reason enough to put Preston’s on any list of beloved ice cream parlors. It’s a look that transports you to yesteryear. New owner Javier Santiago, a career chocolatier, bought the iconic shop recently from longtime owner Irene Preston and vowed to keep making her customers’ nostalgic favorites — honeycomb, peanut brittle, pecan turtles — while making a name for himself with his contemporary chocolate bars under the Javier Confectionery brand.

Santiago is also keeping the ice cream tradition alive. The shop scoops 20 to 30 flavors of Loard’s ice cream ($4.95 for a small cone or cup, $5.95 medium), and he’s making the often-requested Presti Bars ($5.65), ice cream sandwiched between two freshly baked cookies and covered in chocolate. The bars come in several flavors, including vanilla, burgundy cherry and espresso.

The scoop: The top seller is the Mint Chip ice cream, and it’s easy to see why. Preston’s makes the mint chocolate candy, then Loard’s uses that to create this custom flavor for Preston’s.

My first paycheck job was at Friendly's where I was a short order cook, washed dishes, mowed the lawn and, yes, scooped a lot of ice cream.  Black raspberry was my favorite.  I'll have to stop into Preston's and see if they have some!  Kudos to Javier on a nice press hit.

Stylistic Gems of El Camino Real

Jennifer Pfaff, the president of the Burlingame Historical Society, has penned the front-page article for this quarter's society newsletter titled "Overlooked Gems of El Camino Real".  It's a real gem of a piece, too.  You all should be members and get your own hardcopy mailed to you, but for those who have not yet joined I am going to pluck out just the architectural styles mentioned as "gems".  As part of the ECR project, Caltrans engaged a team of architectural historians from AECOM.  That's the source of this list:

• Bungalow Style single -- family homes found all over B'game but not nearly as many as we originally had.
• 1920 Mission Revival commercial automotive architecture - the C & D auto shop tucked away on the south end of ECR (see below).
• European Eclectic Revival - apartment building with arched windows and Flemish parapet end walls.
• Stucco Box apartment buildings - the technical term for our post-WWII flat-roofed structures.
• Podium Style - like The Viking building by Danish architect Mogens Mogensen.
• International Style - like our 8-story Burlingame Towers
• New Formalism Style - like Arcamino West on Arc Way.

This is quite a list for a three-mile stretch of historic road. It seems AECOM might have missed the Art Deco Adeline Market on the list.  Wouldn't it be nice if some of these had some historical protection?

The next Historical Society walking tour is August 6th when the Willborough neighborhood gets the spotlight turned on it.  Learn about the 22 Tudor style homes by joining tour guide Joanne Garrison at 1pm where Palm Dr. meets Willborough Rd.  Here's our Mission Revival shop

B'game History thru Gabriel Moulin's lens

It was standing room only for the quarterly Burlingame Historical Society meeting Tuesday night in the Lane Room.  More than 100 people showed up to hear local historian Joanne Garrison describe photographer Gabriel Moulin's documentation of the early days of the Easton Addition as part of the effort to sell building lots around Hillside Dr.  The genesis of the presentation was a book of said photographs that was donated to the Society.  That kicked off Joanne's effort to take current day matching photos to show the similarities and the changes.  Over 50 minutes, she added details about the Mills, Easton and Howard families--the original land owners in B'game.

The crowd included 17 descendants of Moulin, some of whom travelled from as far away as San Diego, plus a number of local residents of the Hillside-Summit-Canyon area.  Ms. Garrison was able to locate several houses that still exist on Cortez and Cabrillo, but the sad news that an important one on Hillside is schedule for scraping and sub-dividing was the downer of the night.  As the saying goes, "You'll miss it when it's gone".

It was great to see so many people come out to learn about and appreciate B'game history.  Here are the tram tracks going up Hillside drive that carried potential buyers.

Podcast: Hear About the Voice in Our Own Words

This is one of the most exciting posts in the history of the Burlingame Voice because it is about the history of the Voice.  Man-about-town and now podcaster-about-town, Mark Lucchesi, who we wrote about two years ago when he "retired" from Mollie Stone's, has trained his microphone on Russ and me.  You can listen to a number of "Mark at the Mic" podcasts that he has gone for the Burlingame Historical Society by searching that moniker on YouTube.

Russ and I were happy to be asked and had a blast talking about the Voice past and present for about 45 minutes.  The direct link to our podcast is HERE.  You will hear about how we started, who was involved early on, what each of us thinks about some local issues (hint:  we don't always agree and that is half the fun).  I describe some of the "Principles of the Voice" but I didn't get to all of them during our conversation, so here's the list as it sits currently:

• Respect the Law of Unintended Consequences
• There are Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (popularized by Mark Twain, maybe Benjamin Disraeli)
•               Corollary:  A numerator without the denominator is useless
• There is no Free Lunch, somebody is paying.
• Always do cost/benefit assessments
• Does it pass the “Shoe on the other foot” test?
• People get interested when the pothole is in front of their house.
• A cat seldom changes its stripes.
•               Corollary: “When someone shows you who they are believe them” Maya Angelou

The session was also video recorded, so you may get to see our mugs in the future if and when that version is posted to YouTube.  In the meantime, enjoy the podcast. 

The History and Innerworkings of Local Newspapers

The Burlingame Historical Society drew a good crowd to its quarterly meeting especially considering it was right before the Super Bowl.  This quarter's topic was the How the News is Made with guest speaker Jon Mays from the Daily Journal.  Society president Jennifer Pfaff provided an overview of the various early newspapers that existed in the area before Jon spent almost an hour on the innerworkings of the news business.  I had already watched local podcaster Mark Lucchesi's episode with Jon that you can find on YouTube here.

There was some overlap between the two presentations so the podcast will give you some of what you missed by not being at the meeting.  I'll just add three observations.  Jon described how the business model has changed, mostly for the worse, because of the changing advertising and classified ad business.  The subsequent reduction in staffing levels precludes covering events like the local crab feed the way they were done back in the day.  In a sense, that is what I am doing as a citizen journalist with this post.  Noting something that wouldn't otherwise be covered.

Jon also described a recent instance of the Law of Unintended Consequences when he noted the impact of AB5 (the controversial gig worker bill) on his delivery team.  The people who deliver local newspapers don't just deliver one paper; they deliver most--maybe all-- of the papers in the area simultaneously.  My SF Comical comes bundled with my Wall Street Journal everyday which I find amusing.  AB5 disrupts the ability of the drivers to work four jobs at once--literally at once as they make their rounds.  Jon noted that the forces behind AB5 don't understand his business.  That's an understatement since I don't think they understand many businesses at all.

Lastly, Jon described the student journalist program that the DJ operates after school with a kid from each of the local high schools.  This is the classic internship model with hands-on-overseen by professionals work experience.  It's good stuff and has been the origin of a few careers in the news business.  As the grandson of a newspaper editor, Jon gets it naturally.  Notice the Advance Star office on the screen.

Jazzman passes: A terrible loss for B'game

This is a very difficult post for me to write but acknowledging the passing of one of the coolest guys in B'game is necessary.  I first met Andrew Speight eighteen months ago and wrote about him here.  His vision for local jazz of the highest order continued to blossom as I noted here.  He was the band leader for the regular mid-week gigs at the Broadway Grill and I last saw him there on Wednesday--the day before he died.  You can get more of a sense of the man from this NBC Bay Area report.  Andrew was a mainstay of the opening weekend at the new Keys Jazz Bistro in North Beach, as noted by his friend Simon Rowe in the NBC piece, and I told him so between sets that night.

My relationship with Andrew evolved from new acquaintance to being good buddies over the last eighteen months.  I was a regular at his House of Bop club on Capuchino Ave. and he was a regular at my place for drinks, music and planning about bringing more jazz to B'game.  Regardless of how obscure of a jazz record that was playing when he walked in, he would pick out the artists by name and expound on their playing and their personalities.  After he did that with a particularly unusual album I was playing, I expressed amazement at the skill and he said, "it's not hard when you have played with the guy yourself".  I often felt like I was sitting in his SF State class instead of my side yard.

The loss is hard to grasp when you understand what we had planned for B'game.  His first album since the 1980's was recorded at his house last year.  It's mixed, mastered and in the queue to be pressed with the working title "Live in Burlingame".  The LP would help promote a Burlingame Jazz Festival that he hoped to arrange the weekend before or after the Monterey Jazz Festival when a number of his artist friends would be passing through the Bay Area and would be available for gigs.  The plan was to have two or three venues to allow for the local kids to get some stage time.  Andrew was an educator to the end.  We lost a gem of Burlingame and all that could have been.  Here he is at Keys Jazz Bistro on November 12.  RIP.

Update:  The local jazz community sent Andrew Speight off in style yesterday (Dec. 18) with a three-hour jam session at Broadway Grill.  About 40 musicians sat in with the closing number featuring a 5 horn front line.

Lions' Citizen of the Year: Historian Extraordinaire

The B'game Lions' Club makes an annual award of Citizen of the Year to someone in our little town who has made a lasting impact.  Past recipients have varied resumes like this and this and my lovely wife.  This year the Lions reached back into the history of B'game to choose our lead historian, Joanne Garrison, for the honor.  Joanne is the author of the seminal history of Bgame book.  If you don't own the book, you should because it is a stunning bit of work by her and photog Mark Hundley.  In addition, Joanne leads or co-leads the historical walking tours around town and the surrounding sites.  All in all, a great choice.  Here she is with Lion president Bunny and former chief Jack Van Etten receiving her plaque.

By the way, a side benefit of attending the ceremony is hearing about the great work the Lions' Club does around town.  As sponsors of what is now the longest running high school basketball tournament on the Peninsula at BHS, they are gearing up for the contest starting on Dec. 6 and finishing on the 8th and 9th.   They are hosting a Toys for Tots Bingo dinner that starts right after the tree-lighting ceremony on Dec. 2nd--doors at 6pm.  You can RSVP at [email protected].   The annual student public speaking contest is in the works as is a blood-drive at the Club Hall in Washington Park.  It seems like blood drives may have been a casualty of Covid so it's good to see one return.  Alas, I asked about the annual car show, also held in Washington Park but that event is still idling in neutral.

Historic Houses: Heartwarming visits happen

There are a lot of great aspects to owning an historic house--even if Burlingame is notoriously difficult to get the actual designation.  Maybe difficult is too soft a word--how about impossible unless it's the Avenue train station or the Mercy main building.  You do get to feel virtuous that you didn't let some scraper send dozens of tons of wood, shingles, pipe, wire, porcelain, brick and concrete to the dump.  Someone ought to force the tear-it-down-and-build-big YIMBY's to hand carry a few tons of that up to the Skyline landfill.

But faux "climate justice" aside, every once in a while, someone comes knocking on your door with a bit of a sheepish look on their face and says "I hate to bother you but my fill-in-the-ancestor used to live here.  I'm so happy it's still here and that you are home--can I come in?"  Now unless you know who owned your house over the years, this could be disconcerting or worse.  So if you have an old B'game house, get a house history from the Historical Society or go through the old city directories yourself and make a list.

We've done both for our 112 year-old bungalow, so when the doorbell rang this afternoon and the nice, older lady gave her great aunt's name, we knew she was legit.  The great aunt and uncle were the original owners, and we also know that from seeing the last name scrawled on some old wall timbers just as written by some long-forgotten lumber store.  What a treat.  She has some photos that go back to those days and show the house.  I cannot wait to get copies.  I'll update the post when I get them.

P.S. This is not the first time this has happened.  When you have 112 years of history, there are more than a few descendants happy to revisit their youths.

I got this photo of our house circa 1911-12 from the dear lady described above.  This is just a photo snapshot--a better scan will come later.  It's awesome to see how the house has changed so little after all these years.  What has changed is the open space to the left.  That four square bungalow was on El Camino--six or seven lots away-- and was torn down about 22 years ago.  Everybody looks happy to be in Burlingame!

Happy President's Day

Some little moments occur when walking about our town just catch me the right way.  Today is Washington's Birthday or President's Day--take your pick.  After a spell of warm, summer-like weather the seasonal winds and chill returned.  Today had mostly blue skies, light winds and an absolutely lovely string of American flags on Broadway.  It was a reminder of the country and town we live in.  I like it and appreciate that the city B'way BID and the Boy Scouts still do this.

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.