Question for Wudas, and for everyone

Regular reader and frequent commenter Wudas wrote in response to the item on Hutch's Car Wash:

Perhaps some letter to the new owner will make him aware of the issues. And I'm certain he is unaware of the power of the blog. That could mean doom to Hutch's.

Your Boulevardier suspects that your mention of "the power of the blog" and "doom" are delivered with tongue firmly planted in cheek. But he is curious: do you think that this sort of post, in which Your Boulevardier complains about a perceived problem, is inappropriate for this forum? And further, do you believe that this blog has any actual, measurable power to sway public opinion?

Your Boulevardier is skeptical. He believes that people looking for reviews and opinions on commercial establishements will turn to services such as Yelp that aggregate the brainpower of many. (That is why Your Boulevardier often provides links to that service, if a business does not have a website of its own.)

Any and all thoughts on this topic are appreciated. And this provides a good opportunity for Your Boulevardier to thank all readers for your attention, whether or not you choose to comment. (A three-year-old study found that about 90% of blog readers never comment; by extrapolation, that could mean as many as a few hundred of you are out there, but frankly that's doubtful.)

Animal Signs

Your Boulevardier noticed on Sunday that the Castro Valley Companion Animal Hospital on Redwood Road has installed a wonderful new sign. The fellow who installed the sign was engaged in conversation this past Sunday and he told the story.

The sign was created by a sculptor named Doug Stuart who lives in Napa County. The design was agreed upon long ago, and in lieu of the finished three-dimensional sign the design sketch was blown up and installed as a flat sign. Of late the paint on that former sign has been failing; Your Boulevardier photographed it for an item that never ran:



Now that the finished sign is in place, a planter will be built around its base and the thermometer will be calibrated. (On Sunday, the instrument on the south (sunny) side read 90 degrees, while that on the shady side read 70 degrees; the latter was more accurate.) The handsome clock itself is battery powered and automatically corrects itself for daylight savings time, leap seconds, and other temporal anomalies. (Your Boulevardier used this opportunity to learn the difference between Atomic Clocks and Radio Clocks; the clock in this sign is a radio clock.)

Yes We Can

Residents of the Castro Valley Sanitary District got notice recently that our trash-hauling rates would go up. In conjunction with this move, we will be getting new cans for garbage, recycling, and green waste.

Your Boulevardier has discovered the top secret staging area where the new cans are being readied for delivery. It is in the parking lot behind the Rite Aid store on Castro Valley Boulevard -- coincidentally, across the street from the District's offices.

The photo cannot do the scene justice. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cans, both green and grey. The green ones are stacked nine high, in ten rows, by about 40 rows. The mountain of grey cans is smaller but still formidable.



One is curious: what happens with the old cans? Are they recycled? And are the new cans made of recycled materials?

And, to answer Mr. Tom Hannon's question in the comments below: Your Boulevardier does not know where the third can is. But he suspects that the missing cans -- those for trash -- are not yet staged because their delivery is more complicated. There are at least two sizes of trash cans -- Your Boulevardier opts for the smaller, money-saving 20-gallon can, for example -- so these need to be distributed by address, rather than simply leaving one at each residence.

What's Happened to Hutch's?

Your Boulevardier has been taking his vehicle to Hutch's Quik Lube and Car Wash off and on for decades. Of late he has just used the Quik Lube and let the free carwash certificates pile up in the glove compartment, but today he decided to go the whole nine yards.

The oil change was fine, but the car wash was not.

First, the worker greeted Your Boulevardier as "boss." Why this annoys, one cannot precisely say -- but it does. Perhaps it seems vaguely reverse-classist; I'm a customer, yes, but I'm not the boss. Then began a hard-sell of an upgraded carwash. Your Boulevardier drives a pickup truck, and the vehicle does not require an upgraded anything. After the employee finally agreed to just provide the service that was included with the oil change, the vehicle was left in the vacuum bay.

Eventually the pickup came out the wash and was driven to a spot in the bright sun -- and left there. Nobody dried the car for at least ten minutes; by then, why bother? When the wiping was done (sloppily) and the Armor All was applied to the tires (again sloppily) the employee waved a towel and shouted "truck!" She then proceeded to show off her bloody knuckle to Your Boulevardier; why, it is not clear.

Upon entering the vehicle, Your Boulevardier found that the vacuum job was mediocre at best. It's freely admitted that this vehicle is not easy to vacuum, but a little more care to get crumbs and dog hair from between the seats would have been easy and paid big dividends. There was even dirt remaining under the floor mats.

One other thing to note: Hutch's used to provide a postpaid comment card, coupons for future visits, and a rewash guarantee with all washes. No longer. Perhaps they really don't want to know how they did and don't want their customers to return. It can be arranged.

It pains Your Boulevardier to post a curmudgeonly gripe like this on the blog, but it was not a good experience at Hutch's today.

More Movie Madness

Your Boulevardier is a devoted (and, admittedly, repetitious) fan of the Chabot Cinema, but he remembers from his childhood the excitement when the Southland Cinemas in Hayward opened. Two movie theaters in one building -- what a concept!

A blog was stumbled upon today that reminded him of those heady days. Check out these pictures.

When viewing them, Your Boulevardier was certain that they had all been taken at the Southland Cinema I and II. But in fact, they were taken in Texas and Massachusetts. The sheer identicalness (one knows that's not a real word) is uncanny.

By the way, there was a 1:1 staff-to-patron ratio at the Chabot last night for the 6:30 p.m. showing of Watchmen. Your Boulevardier engaged the staffers in a chat and found out that summer midnight movies may not be happening this year, due to lack of advanced planning. Alas.

Hit the Bench

On Sunday morning Your Boulevardier noticed that the bench and trash receptacle by the Castro Village sign seemed to have taken quite a beating recently.



Anybody know what happened?

Echo of the Arts

Your Boulevardier passed the under-construction McDonald's on a walk this blustery morning. Construction is moving apace, though the structure looks nothing like what one might think a McDonald's should look like. In fact, from one angle the new structure looked vaguely familiar.


A walk down the Boulevard and up Redwood Road confirmed (somewhat) Your Boulevardier's suspicion: the gentle arc over the McDonald's facade is not unlike that over the Castro Valley Center for the Arts.

It must actually be said that the McDonald's arc is more stylish. It's gently asymmetrical and airy, while that of the Center for the Arts is plain and heavy. Still, the resemblance is notable.


On the rest of his walk, Your Boulevardier noted a number of other recent buildings with similar arcs, including the remodeled Safeway and the new Taco Bell, both of which are on Redwood Road. (Those buildings' arcs are much less prominent in the designs than the previous two mentioned above.) And, of course, the Wachovia (née World Savings) building is a favorite, but much older, example.

Chronicle Snubs Chabot

Today's San Francisco Chronicle ran an article about the best movie houses in the Bay Area. Sadly lacking from that list is Castro Valley's own Chabot Cinema. So in response to the Big City Snub, Your Boulevardier would like to provide a baker's dozen of reasons the Chabot is wonderful.

1) It's the only single-screen first-run movie theater in the East Bay.
2) Terrific Tuesdays: all tickets just $4.
3) Summer midnight movies.
4) Because it's a single-screen theater, there aren't a bunch of bored-looking folks loitering in the lobby.
5) Several reasonable dining options in the neighborhood.
6) Neon, glorious neon!
7) Food-scrap recycling bins.
8) Reasonable walking distance from BART.
9) New, comfortable seats.
10) Outrageous legroom in the balcony.
11) Movie club gives you free popcorn.
12) No-service-charge online tickets.
13) In-seat concession service (supposedly; Your Boulevardier has not tried this).

If you haven't been to the Chabot recently, please go soon. We, the citizens of Castro Valley, must keep our hometown movie theater alive!

Baker's Square Out, Shari's In

Your Boulevardier notes a news item in the Daily Review saying that the Baker's Square restaurant in Castro Village will become a Shari's. Having not heard of the latter, he did some homework. It's a chain of 100 or so restaurants, headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon but owned by a private investment company out of New York. It will be open 24 hours a day and seems to have a menu not unlike that of Baker's Square -- eggy breakfasts, skillet dinners, salads, pies. Reviews on Yelp range from 2.5 to 4.5 stars. Service seems to be an ongoing challenge. It will be interesting to see how the new establishment does in our town.

Build It Up, Tear It Down

Your Boulevardier walked around the neighborhood just east of the BART station yesterday afternoon. This area is choked with trucks and workers right now because of two big projects.

First is the new Castro Valley Library. The building is crawling with workers who are attaching bright yellow gypsum board exterior siding to its metal skeleton. It looks like roofing panels are stacked on the building's top, but are not yet attached. It still remains very difficult for Your Boulevardier to envision the finished building based upon the construction to date and compared with the artist's rendering that appears on the billboard on Norbridge Avenue. Perhaps it's just a matter of where the front of the building is.

Speaking of the library, Your Boulevardier notes that Don Jose's Restaurant in Castro Village will donate ten percent of its sales during the week of April 13-19 to the library. (It's not clear from the flyer posted on Don Jose's door whether the funds will go toward library construction or to the Friends organization.)

The second project that is clogging the neighborhood just east of the BART station is the reworking of the I-580 interchange with Redwood Road. When completed, there will be a full set of on- and off-ramps here, eastbound and westbound. Yesterday, workers were breaking down the soundwall and ripping out trees along the highway's north side. This is the neighborhood along Juniper Street, behind the Jess C. Spencer Mortuary. (Where, it is noted, Madame Boulevardier was cremated.) Several homes have been demolished, but a few remain defiantly standing -- though it's not sure if they're occupied. It's assumed that Spencer's will lose a good portion of its parking lot to the project as well. Progress is visible on the other side of the freeway as well, with the former professional building having been demolished a few weeks ago. A fairly clear aerial representation of the project can be found here.

It seems the hangup in government budgets has not put either of these projects on hold, which is a good thing because they seem like they would be quite disruptive to the residents of the neighborhood.

Under the Weather

The skies have cleared after weeks of rain, but Your Boulevardier remains under the weather. A rip-snortin' sore throat, stuffy head, ringing ears, and aching joints have been his burden for a few days now, and it has not been pleasant.

However, he dusted himself off today and walked to Castro Village to get his hair cut. The Village Barber Shop wasn't busy, and a seat with Limbo was procured immediately upon arrival. Eventually the place filled up, but Al (proprietor Al) did his best to share the wealth as he answered phones, checked the mail, and so on.

Eventually, as so many conversations do these days, talk turned to the economy. A fellow whom Your Boulevardier assumes to be a banker came in, and Al (bicyclist Al) asked him what he thought of the Bernie Madoff scandal. (Mr. Madoff had plead guilty to all counts earlier in the day.) An unpleasant but not unlikely scenario was suggested for how Mr. Madoff would spend his 150 years in prison. Then a suggestion was made: that Mr. Madoff should be executed during halftime at the Super Bowl.

Your Boulevardier was startled at the words, but did not speak up. It's not certain if the suggestion was made in jest, or was the true sentiment of a very angry person. But nonetheless, Your Boulevardier wishes he had found the words to say that a public execution would be beneath the dignity of the United States. For as difficult as the time we must go through in the future may be -- and it's believed by many, including Yours Truly, that the coming days, weeks, months, and perhaps years will be very difficult -- we cannot allow our society to be reduced to shows of violence. We cannot allow our baser instincts to take hold. We must punish wrongdoers, certainly, but we must not make doing so a public spectacle. We cannot become like the societies we look down upon -- those that glorify vengeance over justice, humiliation over punishment, emotion over reason.

Perhaps Your Boulevardier is overreacting to some barbershop trash talking. But he is embarrassed for himself that he did not speak up in this circumstance.