Daily Journal Poll Question
Last week I wrote about two in-the-works high-rise affordable housing developments, one in Redwood City and one in San Carlos. A reader asked why I haven’t written lately about Redwood City’s Broadway Plaza project and wondered about the affordability of that project’s 520 for-rent apartment…
I’ve spent at least half of every spring semester in high school grounded. Freshman year, it was just the first two, three months until I finally secured an A in English and regained my social privileges. I brushed it off as a fluke.
I have a fairly good gauge of when the community is under stress based on the outreach I receive. People are angry, upset, they seek justice. They seek blame. Language is heightened, aggressive, urgent.
Over the last half-century, California has had seven governors — counting Jerry Brown twice — who varied widely in temperament, ideology and efficacy.
Politicians tend to be procrastinators, putting off major policy issues until they can no longer be ignored without political fallout.
There have been a lot of bogus promises, failed projections and hopelessly sanguine predictions involving California’s high-speed rail program.
Silicon Valley loves to romanticize what it takes to survive and thrive here — that hustle life, garage ideas turned into empires, quirky and overly demanding perfectionists in turtlenecks, risk-takers who changed the world. But “Builders of the Silicon Dream” is a new documentary directed b…
Writing last week’s column, I imagined what it might be like to live in the 21-story senior housing project proposed for 910 Marshall St. in downtown Redwood City.
Out of all species, humans undergo the longest period of development. While many species become self-sufficient within weeks or even days of birth, the human brain isn’t fully developed until the age of 25.
On Tuesday, Sept. 9, we marked the 15th anniversary of the San Bruno pipeline explosion and fire, quite possibly the most vivid and impactful story in the Daily Journal’s history. On that night, eight people were killed, 66 injured and 38 homes were destroyed with 70 others damaged in the Cr…
California is one of the nation’s bluest states, and its bluest region is the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
By now, no doubt, you have seen the ads in support of Proposition 50, the redistricting measure, which are all Gavin all the time. It is just a taste of what is to come, of course.
These are desperate times for Christina Corpus. The clock is ticking on her tenure as the sheriff of San Mateo County. Slowly (very slowly) but surely, the county’s Board of Supervisors is on track to vote to remove her from office for a variety of alleged offenses enumerated in reports and …
Conflict between California’s state officials and its nearly 500 cities and counties — especially over money — is nothing new.
Between January 2025 and last week, ChatGPT’s usage grew from 3.8 billion to 6 billion monthly active users representing one billion queries every single day across 188 million daily visitors. The site now ranks fifth globally, behind Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Which raises a q…
Congressman Kevin Mullin is hopeful. I was glad to hear that given how I felt much of the day before I asked him a few questions for this column.
I am what I call “semi-retired”: I’ve retired from my tech career of more than 30 years but I keep quite busy volunteering, writing my blog and, of course, writing this weekly column. Part of my writing work has me studying the various development proposals that come before the city leadersh…
Teenagers are experts at pushing boundaries. I’ll admit it: I’m no exception. Whether sneaking a phone glance at dinner or telling your parents you’re “headed to study,” then ending up at In-N-Out two cities over, we high schoolers have turned harmless rule-bending into an art.
In honor of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, Sept. 17, the Burlingame Library Foundation is hosting a special event featuring Carolyn Delaney, the chief U.S. magistrate for the Eastern District of California, who will speak to the importance of the Constitution and how its writers had d…
Two months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators from both parties celebrated enacting landmark legislation to remove the California Environmental Quality Act as an impediment to new housing construction.
The end is in sight for the saga of San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus and the move by the Board of Supervisors to fire her.
Oops. Proponents of a new area-wide tax to address looming operating deficits for a number of public transit systems cannot be happy about a revelation of fiscal danger and flawed agency coordination in the South Bay.
Most of us think of Labor Day as the bookend of summer. A long weekend, family barbecues, maybe a last beach trip before routines take over again. But the long weekend has a deeper story, born out of conflict, compromise and the long push for dignity at work.
Redwood City’s revitalization began in the mid-2000s with the creation of Courthouse Square and with the construction of the “On Broadway” building that contains a 20-screen theater and numerous small restaurants. With the adoption of Redwood City’s Downtown Precise Plan some five years late…
A few months ago, at the dinner table, my dad asked my sister and me what books we had read that year for school. My sister, who was in her freshman year at Burlingame High School, replied that throughout the whole year she had read a whopping three books.
As we arrive at the 131st birthday of our beloved San Mateo Sept. 4, I received my own gift that reveals much about the origin and founding of this city of ours.
The news media — and it is funny to realize that I typed that without any sense of irony — is already calling it the redistricting war.
The 80th anniversary of the official end of World War II is coming on Sept. 2. That’s the date in 1945 when the Empire of Japan formally surrendered to the victorious Allied powers on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The war in Europe had officially ended four …
On Friday, I was standing with my daughter along with other parents and their 4- and 5-year-olds waiting for the school gate to open. My oldest was over on the other side of the parking lot hanging out with his buddies at the big kid gate. Some parents and I were chatting about the PTA meet…
Don’t worry, this article is SFW (Safe for Work). Many of my friends and I on “the left” were frustrated with Paramount (CBS, Comedy Central, etc. …) for capitulating to the president by agreeing to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit over what he claimed was unfair editing of a pre-election…
I love to see what, if any, public art comes along with new development projects. Although I can appreciate the look of a well-designed building on its own, an accompanying piece of public art can serve as the icing on the cake. For instance, I find the building at 1180 Main St. in Redwood C…
August is a funny month. Technically, it’s supposed to represent the hazy last days of summer giving way to the first few bits of crisp fall. But as any Bay Area native knows, it’s actually the opposite — the onslaught of hot weather that we’re sure to receive well into September is somethin…
At any time, at any place, we can be plucked from this mortal coil by circumstances completely beyond our control. It happens all the time, and we are particularly aware of it in the news business. Tragedy is all around, yet, still the exception.
The hearing into whether to sustain San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus’ firing has been going on all week, and sitting through it has been an exercise in dissonance, discord and incongruity.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature are steering California onto a unique political course with an unpredictable outcome.
Apparently, the current batch of trustees and administrators running the San Mateo County Community College District are suffering from a convenient form of memory loss — or they are simply delusional.
In one of the most economically stratifying counties in the country, need is growing quietly and quickly. Step into Samaritan House in San Mateo — celebrating 51 years of supporting San Mateo County this year — and it becomes clear who is falling through the cracks and how this long-standing…
On Wednesday, The Baker Next Door — Redwood City’s independent downtown bakery — celebrated its one-year anniversary. My wife and I walked downtown that morning both to congratulate them and to get something to eat (including a free slice of cake marking the business’ important milestone). F…
If an object has all its components replaced over time, is it still the same object? That’s the idea of the Ship of Theseus paradox. The story goes there is a mythical ship of the Athenian hero Theseus, which had its planks replaced over time. Is it then the same ship?
The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors may have taken meaningful and far-reaching actions at its meeting on Tuesday. I am not entirely certain because I only stayed for the two hours of public comment that included:
The decision has been made. For better or worse, San Mateo County is now preparing to hop into bed with a number of Bay Area public transportation operations, including BART.
Here we are — the end of summer break for thousands of youth in our communities.
As I walked through the farmers’ market on Laurel Street in San Carlos on Sunday I was delighted by the abundance before my eyes. The fruit, vegetables, baked goods piled high in so many booths and the happy people of all ages loading up with food for the week truly embodied the San Carlos m…
This week, my attention was drawn to a Daily Journal article titled “Regional transit pass now arriving.” As a longtime commuter on various forms of mass transit in the Bay Area — Caltrain, VTA light rail and various county buses — I learned to assemble the pieces of a mass transit route tak…
I don’t typically respond to columns, guest perspectives, letters to the editor or online comments. I usually allow for the discourse to run its course. But I feel compelled to add my own insight about a recent letter regarding former San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer that I believe was…
A few weeks ago, a video popped up on YouTube, purporting to be a verbal clash between Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, and Gov. Gavin Newsom during a congressional hearing.
In my career at the San Mateo County Transit District, where I special-assisted and senior-advised, I occasionally observed that there are a lot of transit experts and very few of them work at the transit agency. Free advice abounds.
It’s that time again. The list of San Mateo County National Merit Scholarship winners, tallied by school, is ready for public consumption. It’s an annual exercise in this space, a welcome celebration of some of the county’s very best graduated high school seniors even as the 2025-26 academic…
Back in January, San Mateo County Supervisor Jackie Speier introduced a code of conduct resolution for the Board of Supervisors that passed. In June, the city of San Mateo published updated rules and procedures for both City Council and boards and commissions, which now includes mandatory et…
One of the subjects covered by my computer science degree was systems engineering — looking at a system as a whole and considering all aspects over its entire lifecycle. From that, I learned to really think about the best way to solve a problem rather than blindly applying the latest technology.
Commented