Big City Columnist Visits Small-Town Attraction

The San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll has written about taking his granddaughter to the Golden Tee GolfLand Miniature Golf Course on Castro Valley Boulevard. It can be read here.

Land of Plenty

The talk of the town is real estate. Everywhere Your Boulevardier goes, it seems, the land under our (collective) feet is Topic A. The barber shop, the post office, the coffee shop -- the same conversation is being had in all of them. The house sat on the market for how long? How many houses in your neighborhood are in foreclosure? The real estate agents held an open house and only the neighbors came?

One bit of real estate in town that is getting some action can be found on Strobridge Avenue. It seems that the McDonald's there has applied for a permit to raze and replace itself. Your Boulevardier can still remember when that restaurant first opened -- the red-tile outdoor tables, the twenty-nine-cent hamburgers, and the actual Golden Arches. The restaurant grew like an oil-fueled Winchester Mystery House, adding a drive-through, a party room, a play structure, and a huge parking lot that seems to be full all the time. Now it and Wendy's stand alone on what's called by some (certainly by Your Boulevardier) Fast Food Island, circled by one-way traffic and perpetually confusing out-of-town visitors trying to find their way back onto the freeway.

Castro Valley Clockwatching

Your Boulevardier notes with amusement three problems with public timepieces around town.

1. As of last Saturday, the new electronic signboard outside of Trojan Stadium was finally working -- sort of. Its display rotated between images of a waving U.S. flag, a patriotic message, a lighthouse, and a date/time clock that was exactly ten hours behind -- an interval that cannot be chalked up to the end of Daylight Savings.

2. The clocktower in Castro Village, as of an hour ago, was an hour fast -- a clear sign of the time change.

3. At the Jess C. Spencer mortuary on Redwood Road, the lighted clock seems to have been turned off altogether. Many of its bulbs were burned out as of late last week, and Your Boulevardier speculates that perhaps the owners are hoping to kill two birds (time- and bulb-changing) with one stone. The absence is surely felt by the commuters who circle the BART parking lot across the street starting at around 9:55 a.m., waiting for the carpool spaces near the entrance to become fair -- and legal -- game at ten.

Birdland in Castro Valley?

Your Boulevardier has been chained to his desk -- fortunately these days, not literally -- but today he did venture forth briefly to walk with the Trusty BoulevarDog to the post office and Trader Joe's.

The Chinese Pistache trees along the Boulevard near Redwood Road are about to burst into fall color. Their seed pods are already ripening to a torrid fuschia, and on Tuesday afternoon around dusk the trees were loaded with tiny singing birds, eating their fill.

Small but Mighty

Local attorney Matthew Spielberg was spotted by Your Boulevardier on Saturday morning in the Chevron Station -- at the intersection of Castro Valley Boulevard and Redwood Road -- gassing up his 1967 Toyota Sports 800.

Prior to today, Your Boulevardier had only seen pictures of the car in the newspaper. In real life, it is as little and cute and stylish as can be. Mr. Spielberg -- who looks much less like the late public television painter Bob Ross than the photo in the Chronicle suggested -- generously answered questions as a number of admirers milled about the tiny two-seat, two-cylinder car. Then he drove off in the direction of his Redwood Road office.