today was an out and about. Not that I had particularly done a good job of planning, as you will see shortly. It was more that there was this opportunity to ride a long since George had a board meeting & dinner. He had planned on staying overnight rather than have to deal with driving home. I figured if there were any issues, I could always drive us back.
Anyway – Los Altos is one of “those towns’ that has been around since the 1850s. It grew significantly with the onset of the Silicone Valley development/expansion. It might not be.huge, but it is really obvious that there is a significant amount of money here. The main street – so named “Main Street” is a few miles off of HWY 101 heading south. it is “shiny” with all new looking store fronts which seem to be high end boutiques. Except for a variety of small, fancy and expensive food places. While George went off to his meeting,, I waslked up one side and down the other of the main drag. After exploring (including finding Uncommon Threads – the yarn store) I headed back to our hotel. After a short time in the outdoor seating area, I returned to the room. What was to be a short listen to a book wound up being a several hours nap.
Did I mention that I stayed over with the grandsons last night and one of them decided that he needed mamma at about 0100. I was tired. I woke in time to catch the last quarter of the Valkyries game, but missed dinner.
Oh, well…
(Alternatively –
It is a different world. A completely different world. The town is older, in California standards, established in 1853. It was small for decades. It wasn’t until the 1980s that it grew – and still is barely 30k. But it is new money, and from the looks of Main Street – a lot of it. The buildings along Main all appear to be newer construction of the white cement front type and pretty standardized. The actual content of the s shops seem to be high end boutiques, The only charity shop I saw supported the American Cancer Society. The offerings were all designer clothing, fancy china and a few books and puzzles. Oh, yes, and jewelry. There is a wide variety of fancy small restaurants along with several coffee shops which are even pricier than the local Starbucks. The population out on a Wednesday afternoon skewed heavily older white and asian.
I walked both sides of Main Street as well as a few off the shop areas facing parking areas a block or so off Main. The local independent bookstore was tucked back into one of these areas and empty except for the staff.
I found Uncommon Threads – the local yarn store. Bright, clean and a much more limited stock than Avenue Yarns, local to me on Solano Avenue in Albany. The staff was lovely.
From there it was back to the hotel with an hour spent in the outside seating area stitching while people watching. Heading inside to where it was cooler, I watched the last quarter of the Valkyries win before falling asleep and missing the dinner completely.
When we were househunting we spent the first day with a realtor who told us we shouldn’t look in Los Altos: that the town was not child-friendly nor its people. We chose not to see that realtor after that day.
Los Altos featured prominently in the book “California Apricots: the Lost Orchards of Silicon Valley” by Robin Chapman. The town was apricot orchard after apricot orchard, and I’ve been in a house there where there was an upper level that had entirely been an indoor drying rack for them; the owners previous to the woman I knew had in the late 1950s turned it into a dance floor for entertaining.
I’m sure you saw the Heritage Orchard alongside city hall and the library at San Antonio where Main Street comes in. It is by law to be kept and maintained by the city as a reminder of what Los Altos once was–but the latest city council dispensed with the niceties and illegally bulldozed part of it in the last few years to pour concrete for a big patio for the library, to the great anger of those who remember the days and the commitments made and who volunteer to maintain those trees. They discovered that some of the watering to the remaining ones had been ripped out.
It’s an interesting town. They are currently building a new high school with Mountain View in the middle of the parking lot between Target, Walmart, Trader Joe’s and some new apartments, almost done now tearing down the old Mervyn’s store and its strip mall for it and begging the earworm from Cat Stevens of, But tell me–where do the children play?
All the Los Altos kids will have to cross seven lanes of traffic to walk or bike home. Parents objected, but the city was fine with that.
Maybe that realtor was a little bit right and not just projecting.
In retrospect, that realtor was providing honest information. I don’t get the impression of much positive out of this particular community…