The Rest of the Story

Able reporter Kris Noceda provides the whole story on the arrest of a federal probation violator in Castro Valley in this article. It's well worth reading.

The version of the story that appears on page 8 in today's Castro Valley Forum is missing some critical information -- such as the criminal's full name -- as well as the amount of detail and quality of storytelling found in Noceda's report.

Dogs Spotted Yesterday

Your Boulevardier was happy to see two dogs sitting quietly at the feet of their owners who dined on the outdoor patio of Rigatoni's yesterday, mid-day. One was a large golden retriever-style dog (perhaps a mutt) and the other was a small grey terrier of some sort.

Kittycorner, near Chipotle, a young woman walked an energetic white standard poodle -- one with the traditional-yet-seldom-seen "Dutch Clip" poodle haircut.

Malcolm and Me

Writer Malcolm Gladwell has been deemed a "master boulevardier" as well as an "epic ladies [sic] man" in an article by Sean Macaulay.

Your Boulevardier likes Gladwell's books and articles (for the most part) and finds himself surprised by the other information.

The Fix Is In

Your Boulevardier has discovered why there was a pack of bicyclists in the Blockbuster parking lot the other night: a new bike shop appears to be opening in that shopping center, occupying half of what used to be Vella's Locker Room. From the looks of the bikes being test-driven in the lot, the shop will carry "fixies" -- the fixed-gear bicycles so popular with hipsters.

AN Interesting Typographic Question

Your Boulevardier noticed these stenciled words in the parking lot of Castro Valley's Safeway store. (Everyone's favorite parking lot.) Can you notice something interesting about them? (You may want to click the photos for a better view.)




He will post his observation in a day or two.

Crossing the Border

Your Boulevardier has been baking and dipping Madeleines (off and on -- not constantly) for the last two days in preparation for the grand re-opening of the Book Shop, 1007 B Street in Downtown Hayward.

The celebration is Saturday, September 26 from 1 to 5 p.m. Your Boulevardier wouldn't miss it, though he is double-booked on Saturday so will only be there part of the time.

His Madeleines, Your Boulevardier admits, are not the greatest. They tend to be spongy and sticky, rather than crumbly and slightly crisp. One's not sure if the problem is a surfeit of butter, a surplus of sugar, an imbalance of eggs, or some other issue. Though they can be messy to eat, they are tasty. Try one and see for yourself.

Determined Vandals

It's safe to say that those who commit vandalism are generally considered to be lacking in ambition. But not the vandals in Castro Valley. Check out this bit of destruction done to the mini-park at Castro Valley Creek (near KFC).



It appears to Your Boulevardier that the vandals constructed a ramp of concrete blocks and a plastic shelf in order to remove the immense -- and immensely heavy - spherical finial from the bollard.

One does not envy the crew that needs to put this to rights.

This park seems, to Your Boulevardier, to be a trouble spot generally. Last week he encountered two homeless men fighting there. The park is usually littered with trash and shopping carts, and is not generally trafficked by aficionados of the creek. It will be interesting to see if that changes when the Library opens.

Measure for Measure

Your Boulevardier walked down Redwood Road yesterday, passing under I-580 near BART on the new sidewalk. He noticed that this:



The railing for the new faux-stone retaining wall seems to have been manufactured dramatically off-the-mark. It's assumed that the railing was supposed to match the curve of the wall and fit neatly into the hole provided. No such luck. Somebody didn't measure.

One wonders where the SNAFU entered the project, and how it will be resolved. Certainly it would be easier to re-weld the railing to match the wall than to reconstruct the wall to match the rail.

Related: the westbound onramp to I-580 at Redwood Road is a strange thing. A turnout has been constructed partway up the ramp on the left. (Perhaps Your Boulevardier will snap a photo next time he's in the area to illustrate.) If anybody can figure out what that's for, please share.

Cloudy Creek

Your Boulevardier was walking on Grove Way earlier today and noticed that Castro Valley Creek was very cloudy, as if someone had perhaps dumped paint into it. He tried to find the right agency to call to report this (assuming that somebody wanted to know) and found it difficult. There is a Clean Water Program, but it does not list a phone number.

After being bounced from one phone to another (all of whom answered "Public Works") a person took down the information, but did not share any information about what might happen next, or offer to follow up, or even say thank you.

Do readers have any idea who should be called next time?

Abandoned Ship?

Your Boulevardier wonders if anyone from the Post Office has noticed that a white Toyota Supra has been parked in the same spot in the PO lot for at least three days now.

As Autumn Arrives

Your Boulevardier made an after-dinner circuit of downtown Castro Valley this evening, walking first to the Chabot Cinema to view a truly bizarre movie, All About Steve, and then completing a few errands.

The warm evening air and the fingernail moon were, it seems, enticing to others as well. For a weeknight, the town was buzzing with people. Starbucks, Yogofina, and the Ice Creamery all had crowds; packs of teenagers wandered the streets (clumps of boys in their big shirts and cockeyed hats, trying to look hard, trailed by equally sized clumps of girls in tanks and flipflops, texting as they walked). Bicyclists practiced tricks in the parking lot by Blockbuster, while car buffs admired each others' vehicles near Safeway.

Among his errands: Your Boulevardier took a few cuttings (for rooting, even though this is the wrong time of year to do so) from the lantana in front of Chateau Fiebig. The building itself may be an architectural monstrosity, but the colors of the flowers in front of it are wonderful.

Bugging Out in Castro Valley

Some days, Your Boulevardier goes out looking for items. And some days, the items come to Your Boulevardier.

The latter happened today. An 8:30 a.m. knock at the door revealed a uniformed man from the Alameda County Community Development Agency Agriculture/Weights and Measures Department. The friendly, talkative fellow asked to hang three traps on trees on the grounds of Chez Boulevardier. The traps are meant to capture Mediterranean Fruit Flies, Oriental Fruit Flies, and Melon Fruit Flies, according to the sheet the fellow left behind, though he also spoke about the Light Brown Apple Moth.

The young man would have talked for hours about his insect prey if Your Boulevardier would have let him. His enthusiasm for his work, and his generally friendly demeanor, were charming.

The traps will be checked regularly over the next few weeks. It's unclear whether Your Boulevardier will learn about the results of the trapping, but if he does he will post the information here.

Obsession in Pink - no, Beige

Your Boulevardier admits to an obsession with the former Carry Outee. Will it become a food place again? (Toula's Gyros was trumpeted, then vanished.) Or will the site -- a large, unsightly lot, currently with a makeshift chain-link fence -- be cleared for a new use? It's one of Castro Valley's enduring questions, perhaps second only to what will happen with the Gemignanis' unopened diner near Rudy's Donuts.

It doesn't answer the question, but one thing has happened to the Carry Outee: the formerly pink building has been painted a mellow dove grey. This happened earlier this week.

Uncanny

Can-pickers regularly work the trash receptacles on the Boulevard, retrieving recyclables. Which makes this scene, captured by Your Boulevardier this morning, very confusing.



Note that this is one of the receptacles with the recycling pyramid on top. Yet all of the cans and bottles are piled at its base. The only explanation Your Boulevard can come up with: when crews emptied the trash, they deposited the recyclables at the base of the receptacle so the pickers could more easily find them.

Any other theories?

Expressing Oneself

Mon Petit Chou came to collect the Subcompact Loaner yesterday, and found herself a bit peckish mid-afternoon. Your Boulevardier proposed a visit to Chef's Express, the recently opened Chinese food restaurant in the Village. She accepted.

The place is clean and attractive. The process for getting food is not unlike that of a well-known Chinese food chain with a black-and-white bearlike creature as its mascot. You choose the number of entrees you wish, and all other selections flow from there. Samples are offered to help diners decide.

However, this is not a chain; it is a branch of Chef's Experience China Bistro, a large, more traditional Chinese restaurant in downtown Hayward.

We each had two-entree items, which included chow mein and rice. (A tip for the health-conscious: steamed brown rice is available in lieu of fried or steamed white rice.) The entrees were reliably tasty but not exceptional; we both would have liked to see more vegatables, and more freshness in the vegetables we had. (Indeed, and surprisingly, there's only one vegetarian entree option available.) Most entrees were conventional American Chinese: kung pao chicken, broccoli beef, and so on.

The portions were plentiful. In fact, in spite of our famished selves, we left the restaurant with considerable leftovers. Still, getting two two-entree dishes, and making different choices between the two of us, gave us some variety.

The place was busy with patrons, even at 3:00 p.m. One suspects it does a good lunch business, and mostly sells take-out (seeing as how the number of tables inside is quite limited).

Stylish Sidewalk

Your Boulevardier notes that the Redwood Road sidewalk under I-580 -- the one on the west side, closest to the BART station -- has reopened. The new wall of faux stone in various golden hues is quite attractive. Let us hope it does not receive the attention of taggers.

The sidewalk on the opposite side of the street -- that is, next to Spencer's Mortuary -- is now closed, and Your Boulevardier assumes it will get the same stylish treatment as part of the road widening. Your Boulevardier found out about this closure the hard way last night while walking from downtown to Trader Joe's. Fortunately, the temporary barricades were easy to hop.

Weekend Rainfall Totals

The rain gauge at Chez Boulevardier showed 0.51 inches of rain over the weekend -- a pretty substantial amount. Fortunately for the organizers of the Fall Festival, most of it seemed to fall at night.

Your Boulevardier was not able to attend the festival but would enjoy comments from those who did.

Sunday Buzz

Your Boulevardier and the Subcompact Loaner walked to Valley Java this morning. We have three observations:

1) The construction of the 238-Strobridge interchange seems to have stopped at about 90 percent of completion. Though the ramps themselves are finished, cones (or whatever one calls those upright orange pylons with the black bases that are glued to the pavement) and striping are all that, to this layman's eyes, remain to be completed. Along with regular trash removal, of course.

2) The congregants of the Neighborhood Church may be fine people, but they really don't seem to care much about pedestrians and small dogs who are trying to cross Castro Valley Boulevard. A little more observation and courtesy would be appreciated. Please, friends: at least pretend to stop at the limit line -- that's the first line of the crosswalk -- before turning right onto John Drive.

3) The activity level at Valley Java was, at least at this visit, considerably lower than it used to be. Maybe Peet's has siphoned off some of the business, or perhaps the decamping of Judge Peggy Hora to parts east has caused her klatsch to find another place to gather.

Boom Town

Your Boulevardier sat on his back deck for a while this morning, watching the thunderstorm over the hills east of Castro Valley. The storm is great free entertainment, though one suspects it makes the organizers of the Fall Festival a little nervous.

Addendum: The Subcompact Loaner is my houseguest this weekend, and on our morning walk we saw a white opossum. A bit of Googling reveals that "An albino variation is not an uncommon sight" in opossums.

Still, between the weird weather and the unusual wildlife encounter, it's feeling like a strange day already.

Connection Revealed

A facade improvement (at least Your Boulevardier assumes that's what's going on) at 3235 Castro Valley Boulevard has revealed this long-covered hand-painted business sign.


Do any readers recall when the Rental Connection did business in Castro Valley? The typography leads one to think it was in the 1970s.

Ouch

Your Boulevardier generally avoids ribald humor in this space, but this is the exception that proves the rule.

After reading Mary Roach's wonderful Bonk over the Labor Day Weekend (thank you, Renée), this office on Strobridge Avenue across from McDonald's took on a whole new meaning.

Festival Season

Festival Season in Castro Valley hits its stride in the next few weeks with:

The Fall Festival on September 12-13. Strangely enough, Your Boulevardier can't find a website for this annual event.

The Valley Blues Festival on September 19 at the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Grounds. Sponsored by the Rotary Club, tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door.

The Our Lady of Grace Festival on September 26-27. It has a Hawaiian theme this year. Among the entertainment: the Castro Valley Community Band will play on Sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. (Alas, Your Boulevardier can't make the gig ...)

On Four-Day Workweeks

On this first day of a four-day workweek, it seems an appropriate time to call attention to a small typewritten sign spotted recently by Your Boulevardier on the door of Merle Norman Cosmetics on Castro Valley Boulevard. It reads:

ATTENTION .... PLEASE !!!!!

WE TRY TO CONSERVE ENERGY BY:
(1) KEEPING THE LIGHTS TURNED DOWN
(2) BEING CLOSED ONE EXTRA DAY

IF EVERYONE THAT COULD WORK A FOUR DAY WEEK
WOULD SAVE MILLIONS $$$$$$$

ONE LESS CAR ON THE ROAD JUST ONE DAY A WEEK
AGAIN MILLIONS $$$$$ WOULD BE SAVED ....
LESS FOSSIL FUEL BEING BURNED ... MUCH BETTER
FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT ......

ALL WE ASK IS THAT YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR CHOICES
TO MAKE THIS A BETTER WORLD-------INSTEAD OF
COMPLAINING THAT IT'S NOT CONVENIENT!

SEE YOU ON WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY OR SATURDAY

To which Your Boulevardier can only respond: "Amen."

Minnesota Gives Up

Your Boulevardier snapped this photo a few weeks ago of the billboard that stood guard at the west end of Castro Valley Boulevard.



Minnesota tried to kick California when it was down. But clearly its plans failed, because now there's a Corona Beer advertisement in its place.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Your Boulevardier has been traveling -- once to far Northern California, and once to far Western New York -- and those trips have been followed by an amount of professional work that has been, frankly, staggering.

As a result, he has fallen out of the habit of posting here. You have his apologies. After Labor Day, it is hoped that regular missives will return. (At least as regular as can be hoped, given the source.) Meantime, here are three items to wet readers' whistles, all related to eating establishments in town:

1. Baker's Square has now become Shari's, as hinted here back in March.

2. The Dell Cafe has applied to repaint its building and repair its neon sign. This is wonderful news. The Boulevard needs more neon. Seriously.

3. As of September 1, Big Apple Bagels has painted its windows in a Halloween theme. Holiday creep begins.

P.S. Is there interest among regular readers in a Castro Valley Boulevardier Facebook presence?