Redwood City’s Veterans Boulevard is finally having its day. I’ve lived in Redwood City for more than 35 years, and for most of that time it has primarily been a street to be crossed to get to Kohl’s (before that, Mervyn’s), Sports Basement (Toys R Us) or Highway 101. Other than the very occ…

Every day, the second floor of the Redwood City Public Library is filled with the turning of pages and quiet buzz of conversation as tutors and learners sit side by side.

To paraphrase on old saying, the chaos will continue until morale improves.

Let’s just call it an “auto-arachnid.” It’s a spider that lives in our car — not the actual interior, not the driving/passenger compartment. The creature inhabits the workings of the passenger-side adjustable mirror. We have yet to observe it up close. But we know it’s there because we find …

Every generation thinks they lived through the fastest period of change in history. But this time, transformation is hitting all industries at the same time, with accelerating velocity. The world our kids are growing up in is rewriting itself in real time and a decade from now, many of the j…

How do we live in a world of AI, have access to professional advice on YouTube, yet women are still confused about health issues affecting their day-to-day lives?

Recently I returned from a long weekend in San Diego, where my wife and I, along with my brother and sister-in-law, spent three full days working through two large mini-storage units full of items, big and small, that once belonged to my parents. It was a lot of work, but fun in a way. And i…

Somewhere along the way, we forgot what education was supposed to be about.

Recently enacted legislation now requires elementary schools to teach cursive at some point between first and sixth grades, which means that the diminishing skill will be revitalized for the next generation.

There are many reasons to run for office and, I suppose, vindication is as good as any.

Dumbing down standards has become a sorry epidemic throughout much of society. It’s not a new trend. It’s right there in plain sight.

There’s so much to write about this week. A government shutdown wreaking havoc on everyday lives. A small startup helping to fund Zoom calls between National Park rangers and classrooms so they can get a paycheck. ICE detaining people who shouldn’t be detained. The National Guard marching in…

It seems like just yesterday that Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators enacted a state budget that papered over a $20 billion gap between income and outgo while blaming President Donald Trump for their fiscal dilemma.

Can you imagine waking up to a cacophony of noise that sounds like war has broken out, a Black Hawk helicopter buzzing outside, apartment doors smashed through, flash-bang grenades exploding, people screaming, and then, your door knocked off the hinges?

At its mid-August meeting, the Redwood City Planning Commission reviewed and unanimously approved a mixed-use project for 1201 Main St. For some, this may be a bit of déjà vu: A similar project was approved in April of 2023. But after the project was first approved, the developer redesigned …

Someone yelled out that conservative activist Charlie Kirk had been assassinated when I was in my digital photography class Sept. 10. Upon leaving class and during that evening, my Instagram was flooded with stories honoring Kirk. It was the same post from “@theconservateur” reposted again a…

With President Trump “strongly recommending” that National Guard troops could be coming to San Francisco next, I have some suggestions.

After everything, it ended not with a bang, but because of health insurance. So 2025.

It’s certainly not blatant culinary cancel culture. It’s a seemingly harmless recommendation. But it is a bit worrisome. Let’s call it “Burger Bias.”

Last week, a state appellate court declared that a 2020 ballot measure to increase hotel taxes in San Diego is valid even though it did not receive the two-thirds approval that voters had been told it would require. The decision was the latest skirmish in a years-long political and legal wra…

I’ve been looking forward to this day since the beginning of 2018, when the ELCO Yards project was first proposed (but under a different name).

The definition of an ethical dilemma is quite simple. A matter of two conflicting moral ideas, where both present viable pros and cons. The average joe could rattle off several instances of ethical dilemmas throughout history and philosophy: the trolley problem, artificial intelligence, the …

A student learning a foreign language must begin with its grammar and spelling as a building block. It is not enough to just know the words, they have to be spelled right.

Retired Judge James Emerson issued his opinion this week sustaining three of the allegations that were the basis of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors’ unanimous vote waaay back in late June to fire Sheriff Christina Corpus.

It wasn’t always like this. San Mateo County once had its share of significant outdoor entertainment venues. Not so much today. Property is just too valuable.

High schoolers are busy getting their college applications in, now due just after Thanksgiving for UCs and CSUs. Many are nervous about cost.

“I only moved here a few months ago, and I didn’t think this would happen so soon.”

As we are all well aware, even with the news of eye-popping salaries for some jobs at many of our area’s high-tech companies, housing in San Mateo County remains difficult to afford, if not completely unaffordable, for a great many county residents.

“Uncharted territory.”

Two high schools were placed on Secure Campus last month in response to a specific threat in a social media post that also included an image of ammunition. The two schools, Menlo-Atherton and Carlmont, were in Secure Campus for just over an hour while police worked to ensure the campuses were safe.

Without fully realizing it, I have had a bit of an obsession with the statue of Junipero Serra that looms over Interstate 280 in the general vicinity of Hillsborough.

How tall is too tall? That question is very much on the minds of folks in Redwood City these days. And rightly so.

For something that half the population will experience, the silence from modern Western medicine around this stage of life is deafening. Our mothers and aunts lived through it, often in confusion and discomfort, with little more than a shrug from the very profession sworn to care for them. T…

Gavin Newsom jetted off to New York this week to portray himself as the alternative to Donald Trump on climate policy.

We were at Stanford Shopping Center, admiring the Coach bag display, when my mom told me about her latest read — Margareta Magnusson’s “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.”

A restaurant host in Monterey asked if it was a special occasion, to which I replied it’s my wife’s birthday. Then they forgot to put a candle in the dessert, even though five, literally five, other tables around us were celebrating anniversaries, engagements, birthdays. And they all got candles.

Three decades ago, thanks to the patronage of legendary San Francisco politician Willie Brown, two young, ambitious politicians launched careers that have taken them into the upper strata of American politics.

To those in official positions whom I have offended with incautious comments, I apologize sincerely and fully. Further, I appreciate the recent suspension from my regular duties, which provided an opportunity for soul-searching regarding my own biases, particularly as it concerns the preside…

Since his football playing days came to a close, Tom Brady, the most successful quarterback in the history of the National Football League by just about any definition you care to employ, has invested in a number of professional sports teams, both in the United States and abroad.

There’s a lot to write about this week. Nepal’s badass Gen Zers, the unfortunate and unnecessary death of Charlie Kirk, Proposition 50 and redistricting, two sides of the same fight over how power and representation are structured, alongside the eternal local battles over more roads or fewer…

A veteran, behind on his bills, was sitting in the dark. PG&E had shut off the power. A local nonprofit could pay the bill with a program supporting CalFresh recipients but this vet, despite being eligible, was not on CalFresh.

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.