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The Redwoods Appoints Five New Board Members

1/30/2016

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The Redwoods, Mill Valley’s community of seniors, appointed five new members to its board of directors this month.

The new members are, from left: Scott Miller, a partner with a San Francisco accounting firm; Genevieve Moore, an estate planning and elder law practice expert; real estate broker Michelle Steinhart; Sarah Oliver, CEO of Sarah Oliver Handbags; and former Mill Valley City Councilman Andy Berman.

"We are very pleased to have such wonderful and committed individuals join the Board," board president Betsey Cutler says. "As The Redwoods gets closer to completing the first phase of its Revitalization Project - and begins to plan the second phase - their expertise will be invaluable.”


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Take a World Tour with Photographer Beverly Anderson at MV Chamber, Feb. 2 First Tuesday Artwalk

1/28/2016

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PictureBeverly Anderson. Courtesy image.
You likely won’t find a more art-tastic home in Mill Valley than that of Beverly Anderson and Woodward Payne.

Payne is a renowned painter, creating watercolors of the natural environment, and Anderson is a photographer, who documents the couple’s travels across the globe to places like South Africa, Italy, Australia and Mexico. The walls of their home off Panoramic Hwy. are adorned with their respective work, and Anderson will be showing her latest collection of travel photos, “Away,” at the at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center (85 Throckmorton, with a wine reception on February 2 (6–8pm) as part of the Mill Valley Arts Commission's First Tuesday Artwalk.

The monthly celebration of local art includes a host of venues, including the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Seager Gray Gallery, the Mill Valley Public Library, Zener Schon Contemporary Art, Gelateria Noci, Julie Tuton Boutique, Terrestra, the Depot Bookstore & Café, City Hall, Famous4 and the Mill Valley Community Center, Seager Gray Gallery and the Throckmorton Theatre. Receptions at each venue are Tuesday from 6–8pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.

​Payne and Anderson have been together for 30 years, and Anderson has an entire career as a teacher behind her. She was a home economics teacher at both San Rafael and Terra Linda high schools.


“I’m responsible for 22 years of young people having nutrition,” she says with a laugh.

That background played a role in how Anderson first met more than three decades ago. Anderson was also teaching at the Culinary Academy of San Francisco at the time, and she had designed a benefit event for Meals on Wheels. The theme of the event was edible costumes, and when Payne and Anderson first met, she was wearing a costume made entirely of herbs and flowers.

“I was an herbal feast,” she says.

Payne is also an accomplished and prolific photographer, and when he told Anderson many years ago to frame her “Tuscan Carts” photo, she was hooked.
​

“Once you frame your first photograph, you’re gone – I was very encouraged after that,” he said.

The 411: Beverly Anderson exhibits her photography at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center, 85 Throckmorton Avenue, throughout February. The First Tuesday Artwalk receptions are Tuesday, February 2, 6–8pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.


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At the Ever-Colorful Kress Jack at Home, It’s All in the Family

1/27/2016

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Faced with high rents and a fickle marketplace, many local retailers look to find new revenue streams.

Longtime Mill Valley resident and interior designer Kress Jack has done just that, putting five unique-yet-complementary businesses under one roof at 11 Locust Ave., and she’s done so by keeping it in the family – her incredibly artistic, imaginative family, that is.

The result is a swarm of creativity inside a 1,200-square-foot-space that includes:
  • Kress Jack at Home, the interior design and color consulting business that is the foundation of it all and brings in the lion’s share of the revenue. Jack defines her style as “relaxed, eclectic, chic,” saying she wants the spaces she designs to be “cozy, fun, whimsical and full of surprising pieces.”
  • ​Kress retail shop, which showcases Jack’s eye for vintage housewares and accessories and her restoration of vintage furniture. With the help of longtime Mill Valley resident Denise Carletta, widely known locally as one of the co-founders of the former Showroom retail shop downtown, these two businesses are on the rise. “She has an artist’s eye and a balancing nature and has been a great asset,” Jack says.
  • Kobra Furniture, the line she and her boyfriend, contractor Boris Cobra, recently launched to display his knack for creating stone and marble pieces on steel bases.
  • Miles to Roam, the fast-growing collection of vintage clothing curated by Jack’s 26-year-old daughter, Natasha Garrett.
  • Jean Jack, Kress Jack’s mom and an artist who exhibits at galleries all over the U.S., showcases her minimalist paintings of barns and houses, work that serves as the perfect backdrop for everything else in the shop.
PictureAll in the family: Natasha Garrett, Jean Jack and Kress Jack. Courtesy image.
“I wasn’t really even expecting this – but it was my dream to one day work with my daughter,” Kress Jack says. “And my mom’s art has become so popular, and my furniture line with my boyfriend is doing really well – it all just feels good.”

The aforementioned family affair also encompasses friends: Jack’s longtime friend Bea Johnson, the Zero Waste Home blogger and media star who is also an artist, creates “amazing pieces of art” with the very few disposable items her family uses, like butter wrappers.

It also includes 
mask maker Rachel Pozivenec, an artist who creates life-like animal masks that have taken off over the past year.

PictureA piece of artwork made out of disposable butter wrappers, by Zero Waste Home blogger Bea Johnson. Courtesy image.
With so much going on at Kress, “Sometimes it can feel a bit chaotic in here,” she admits. “But it’s a great time in my life where I don’t feel the pressure to make lots of money, have relatively low overhead and have a very simply life. It’s fun to try to make the best out of this little space that I can.”
​
Born and raised in Greenwich, Conn., Kress Jack moved to the Bay Area in the late 1980s for an internship at San Francisco Studios, then the city’s first full-service movie production studio.

“I originally wanted to be in the film business,” Jack says.

But as she started having kids – she also has a 24-year-old daughter who now lives in New York and a 14-year-old son who goes to Tam High – and juggled stints representing different furniture and product lines with raising children, she realized that she was intensely drawn to design. 

“As my kids got older, I knew that design was always going to be a part of my life – interior design in particular,” says Jack, who also had her own store in San Francisco more than a decade ago. 

Jack spent time in the home staging business, a move which helped her understand the logistics and financing around buying and selling furniture, a critical component to her current businesses.

Coupled with her knowledge of colors, her developing furniture expertise gave Jack the sense that she was ready to launch her own business in 2007. As she grew Kress Jack at Home steadily by word of mouth, she eventually rented office space in the ICB Building in Sausalito.

“Then I realized what I loved to do most is collecting vintage furniture and fixing it up and selling it,” she says. “I wanted to have a place in Mill Valley closer to home that could function as a home to all of those interests.”

About 18 months ago, Jack found a retail space on Locust Ave., a “street that I was hoping that was going to become something funky, and it really has – it’s become a center for design, art, fashion.”

With neighbors like 7 on Locust, Elena Calabrese Design and the Poet and/the Bench – not to mention nearby Henrybuilt on the other side of Miller Ave. – the Mill Valley Design District has indeed emerged on a street that was largely dormant less than two years ago, and Kress is right at the heart of it.

“It’s our own little cul de sac of creativity,” she says.

The 411: The Kress retail shop and Kress Jack at Home are located at 11 Locust Avenue. More info.


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Marin Theatre Company Heads to the Office with  'Swimmers' in March

1/26/2016

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While the Marin Theatre Company is in the midst of a lauded production of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean, it's already getting set for its next act: Rachel Bonds’ Rella Lossy Award-winning Swimmers, which opens March 3. MTC says Swimmers is a beautiful "slice of life" ensemble play (that) explores the relationships we take most for granted – those with whom we work every day.

Set in a contemporary office, Bonds’ play explores the relationship paradigms of the work space environment through a set of diverse co-workers and their personal lives and habits. This ‘slice of life’ play reveals how each of the characters intermingle with their day-to-day routines and the quirky social dynamics among one another. While each tries to cope with their own realities of the pressures, politics, and company culture inside, a strange tide seems to be rising outside. Sink or swim, each one of them tries to navigate their course against the current, while the world outside their cubicles looms with ominous signs of impending doom.   

Swimmers was honored with the 2015 Rella Lossy Award for excellence in a world premiere script. The Rella Lossy Award honors the memory of the late Rella Lossy, a lifelong lover and champion of the American theatre and playwriting. She published several plays, served as the theatre editor of Bay Arts Review, and was a founding member of Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Ms. Lossy was also an actress, poet and supporter of the arts in the Bay Area. This award is funded annually from an endowment created by Dr. Frank Lossy, Rella’s devoted husband, and administered by The San Francisco Foundation.

The 411: Swimmers opens March 3 at the Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., and runs through March 27. Info, showtimes and tickets: marintheatre.org | (415) 388-5208 | boxoffice@marintheatre.org.

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Mill Valley Woman Helps San Quentin Inmates Get Ready for Post-Prison Job Search

1/23/2016

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Last month, a group of would-be job seekers got a chance to sit down with a diverse group of Bay Area employers – from Caltrans to Rubicon Bakery and many more in between – and pick their brains for career advice, interview tips and techniques, resume critiques and even exchange contact information.

But this was no traditional employment seminar: the job seekers are all inmates at Marin’s San Quentin State Prison, right in our backyard, and participants in the prison’s Employment Readiness Seminars, an eight-week curriculum that is designed to provide them with the essential skills and tools they need to find, and keep, a job after they are released from prison.

The curriculum was designed by Mill Valley resident Diana Williams, who began volunteering at San Quentin two years ago through the California Reentry Program and the Inside Prison Project. Williams has an M.A. in counseling psychology and was initially drawn to helping inmates with the social and emotional aspects of their predicament and the choices that led them to prison. “Interest in human beings has always been paramount in my life,” Williams says.

There was some unexpected momentum for programs like the Employment Readiness Seminars in 2015, as conservative power player Koch Industries surprised many by touting the need for bipartisan reform of the criminal justice system, putting forth a five-point plan that specifically mentioned the need to help youth and non-violent offenders re-enter the job market after their release.

Williams says that sort of support is crucial. “Jobs are the number one factor to prevent recidivism,” she says.

One of the unique elements of the San Quentin program is it’s origin. It’s the brainchild of Nelson “Nobel” Butler, a 46-year-old San Quentin inmate who was in the midst of the parole hearing process and wanted to know how to get a job because he has been incarcerated since he was 19 years old.

“Men in prison have no way of finding out how to get a job,” Butler, who met Williams through his participation in the inmate group TRUST (Teaching Responsibility, Utilizing Sociological Training), told the San Quentin Times.

The chance to meet with employers was the culmination of the Employment Readiness Seminars, which begin with a seemingly basic but critical question: what are my skills and interests? For many inmates, particularly those who’ve been in prison since they were young men, that’s a difficult question to answer, Williams says.

Chung Kao, 54, told the Times that the highlight of his training was doing an interest assessment. “It told me more accurately about myself than I could do about my own interests,” he says. “That stuff is very accurate if you follow it step by step.”

The curriculum also helps inmates present themselves to employers on resumes and cover letters, how and where to search for jobs, conducting themselves in interviews and, perhaps most importantly, how to keep and thrive in a new job.

“It’s a comprehensive job readiness curriculum that encourages the men to hold the highest vision for themselves and their futures,” Williams says. “It gives the men a jump start, since these are programs usually offered at career centers after they get out and the inmates get to meet employers while they are still incarcerated.”

Williams says several employers have told her that the men coming out of prison are often their best employees because there are things that the prison experience has honed in these men: discipline, the ability to work well with others and, most of all, patience.

“They are literally always waiting in line for everything, and they are grateful for the opportunity,” she adds.

The Employment Readiness Seminars will continue in the spring, and Williams is looking for more employers to participate, particularly in the job fair that concludes the program.

Williams said the labor shortage in the Bay Area, particularly in construction, presents a great opportunity for the inmates. And many of them have participated in apprenticeship programs within specific industries, so that they’ll leave prison with skills ready-made for jobs in construction, manufacturing, delivery services or landscaping.

“We make it a routine to hire people who have been incarcerated,” said Jesykah Forkash, one of the owners of Aaron Metals. “We want them to go from being a lifer in prison to being lifers with us.”

Williams says that while employers like Social Imprints have made it their social mission to train and hire former inmates, many others have done so quietly. Regardless, the impact is huge.

“To be in the midst of the men who are making huge changes in their lives and taking advantage of the programs of the prison – it is inspiring incredibly inspiring to be there and see how far men are willing to go and how far they are transforming themselves,” she says.
​

If you’re interested in connecting with Williams about participating in the Employment Readiness Seminars, email info@millvalley.org.


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City, School District to Partner on a Pilot School Bus Program

1/22/2016

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The Mill Valley City Council on Tuesday night unanimously expressed support for a targeted two-year yellow school bus pilot program, as well as the City’s commitment to partially fund the pilot program, as part of a comprehensive effort to reduce traffic in and around town.

The proposal, for which Mill Valley School District parents expressed widespread support in a 2015 survey, calls for a partnership between the City, the District, the County of Marin and Marin Transit to implement a school bus pilot project that seeks to reduce traffic congestion and travel times along Mill Valley’s two main arteries of East Blithedale and Miller avenues.

A school bus pilot program was one of a number of recommendations from the City’s Traffic and Congestion Reduction Advisory Task Force, which held a number of data-driven, solutions-oriented meetings in the latter part of 2015 and will continue focusing on the larger traffic problem in early 2016.

The proposed school bus pilot project is specifically designed to target the more than 430 school district families currently making car trips across Highway 101 each day to get to school. The abundance of school-related, cross-freeway trips was deemed a contributor of as much as 25 percent of Mill Valley’s traffic, according to data from Parisi Transportation Consulting. That is largely a result of the fact that Mill Valley’s highest populated areas are served by its two smallest schools in Old Mill and Park elementary schools, and thus many students in those neighborhoods must commute across town to larger schools like Edna Maguire Elementary School.

City Manager Jim McCann said the school bus pilot project was just one of many strategies the City is looking to implement to fix the traffic problem, but that it was an important one to try. Download the Staff Report.

“The community really wants action on the traffic problem and expects us to find opportunities that are realistic,” McCann said. “My sense is that pursuing a school bus program is an opportunity that we can and should seize. It is realistic and within our grasp and it would make a meaningful impact on reducing traffic and reducing the travel times on our main corridors.”

The pilot program has an estimated cost of approximately $220,000, though that doesn’t include the administrative costs of organizing and managing the program, which will be handled by the School District with assistance from Marin Transit. The targeted program would likely utilize two buses that hold approximately 65 passengers apiece.

In a significant sign of its commitment to making the program work, the School District has committed to adjusting its school bell times, thus allowing two buses to handle multiple schools in both mornings and afternoons.

“We will tackle a sacred cow – when school starts and ends – to make this bus service work,” Mill Valley School District Superintendent Paul Johnson said.

Following the lead of successful school bus programs in Ross Valley and Tiburon-Belvedere, the City has committed to subsidize the cost of school bus service for at least the first two years to make it attractive to parents.

On Tuesday night, the Council endorsed allocating City funds to pay at least one-quarter of the cost, with the hope that that County, which includes 55 percent of District families in areas like Homestead Valley, Tam Valley and Strawberry, would also subsidize the cost. County Supervisors Kate Sears, who represents much of southern Marin, and Steve Kinsey, whose District 4 includes Homestead Valley, have agreed to garner the Board of Supervisors’ support for school bus funding.

Mayor John McCauley noted that while the City served the entire populace and not just families in the Mill Valley School District, “just freeing up the roads for all of us is something that the City can logically participate in. A lot of work has been done and there is still a lot of work to do. This feels right to me.”

School bus users will pay for the additional cost of the program at a rate of approximately $420 per student for both morning and afternoon bus service for the entire school year. Robert Betts, the Director of Planning and Operations for Marin Transit, created demographic interest maps using the results of the 2,080 responses to the District’s transit survey matched with the locations of survey respondents. In doing so, they determined that strong support existed in enough concentrated areas to target the bus service on specific areas.

Homestead Valley, for instance, is home to more than 100 families with children attending Edna Maguire School, across town. 

“That right there is an opportunity to get 100 cars off the road that travel daily to Edna,” Johnson told the Council, noting that Betts had already created rough drafts of possible bus routes. The school bus pilot program would not serve every neighborhood and every school at first, though City and District officials said the project could be expanded if successful.

“We are using school buses as a congestion management strategy,” said Councilmember Stephanie Moulton-Peters. “This is a very targeted and cost effective way of reducing traffic. I’m really excited that we have come to this point.”

City officials estimated that just 74 families would be needed to pay half of the cost through user fees of approximately $420 per student per year, which breaks down to slightly higher than $1 per bus ride. The City and the County would share the additional cost of approximately $50,000-$60,000 per year, with the District taking on the administration and management of the program with the help of Marin Transit.

“It’s appropriate that they do that since they are so close to these families,” McCann said.

With the City’s commitment in place and the County’s expected to follow in the coming weeks, the District and Marin Transit can start building the school bus program, including its scope, seeking bids from service providers, securing commitments from District families to participate in the program and implementing and administering the service.

The City’s Traffic and Congestion Reduction Advisory Task Force will also continue work on its objective and recommendations to meet it.

After a series of meetings, including a packed Community Meeting on the subject, the Task Force identified its objective “to reduce travel times on the East Blithedale Avenue and Almonte Boulevard-Shoreline Highway corridors to 2012-2013 levels,” as traffic levels have spiked significantly since then.

For instance, to achieve that goal, travel times on East Blithedale between Millwood Avenue and Highway 101 would need to go down by 35 percent from 7-10am, 24 percent from 10am-3pm and 33 percent from 3-7pm.

The Task Force, convened by then-Mayor Ken Wachtel, includes key representatives from the City, the County of Marin, the Chamber of Commerce, Mill Valley School District, Tamalpais Unified School District, Tamalpais Community Services District, Caltrans, Assemblymember Marc Levine’s office and Senator Mark McGuire’s office.
​

Its recommendations fall under three umbrella strategies:
  1. Reduce vehicle demand through measures like school buses and continued growth of the number of students walking and bicycling to school.
  2. Improve operations of existing infrastructure through actions like changing traffic light synchronization.
  3. Increase road capacity by changes like adding a dedicated on-ramp to southbound Hwy.101 from eastbound East Blithedale, for example. These projects would likely be the most expensive and time-consuming.
There are nearly 50 measures collectively within those three categories (go here for the full list of measures), which traffic consultant David Parisi categorized based on their likely impact, their estimated cost and the timeline within which they could be implemented.


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ICYMI: Mill Valley Now Has Its Own Watch & Clock Repair Shop

1/21/2016

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Rolf Klotz, at right, and his son Michael at Klotz Watches & Clocks at 38 Millwood.
For many years and for arguably good reason, Mill Valley residents have lamented the loss of vital resident-serving businesses.

So here's some good news: Mill Valley is now home to a watch and clock repair shop whose proprietor has been plying his trade for more than five decades and recently relocated from San Francisco, where it was regarded as a neighborhood institution.

Rolf Klotz and his son Michael have opened Klotz Watches & Clocks at 38 Millwood Street (near East Blithedale), the former home to the Above Category bike shop, and Klotz has already heard the delight from local watch and clock owners who’ve had to go far and wide to get their timepieces fixed.

Klotz’s wry sense of humor is frequently on display, both in person – he suggested that he spent hours putting on makeup prior to having a quick photo taken this week – and on his website, where he notes that his “first dream was to become a car mechanic but his father said he was too small to work on cars, at 14, and apprenticed Rolf with a Master Watch & Clockmaker (today Rolf is well over 6 feet tall).”

Born in Liegnitz, which became part of Poland after the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II, Klotz moved to Essen, near Dusseldorf, when he was just six months old. He began his training to repair watches and clocks in 1958. After completing a three-plus year apprenticeship, Klotz became a watchmaker for five years before attaining a "Meister's" – a Master’s Degree and the highest level of certification in his industry.  

Klotz then worked for two of the biggest watchmakers in the world, Omega Watches in Dusseldorf and Rolex in Cologne.
On a trip to Spain, Klotz met his future wife Kathy, who had previously lived in the Bay Area. They moved to the area, and in 1988, Klotz opened his shop at Fillmore and Lombard streets in 1988, quickly becoming the city’s most sought-after watchmaker. After 10 years there, he moved his shop to upper Market Street near Cafe du Nord, where he had the shop for 15 years until June 2015. When his property owner doubled his rent, Klotz knew it was time to move, and this time he hoped to find a space in Marin, as he and Kathy have lived in Sausalito for the past 17 years.

“I still miss my great store, and my customers there miss me as well – it was a great shop,” Klotz says. “But we’re excited to be here and we’re building a community here.”

Wondering if Klotz can fix your watch or clock? He has a pretty straightforward, tongue-in-cheek answer for you: “Any timepiece – except for a sundial.”
​

The 411: Klotz Watches & Clocks is at 38 Millwood Street. More info.

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Mill Valley Chamber Music Society Presents Prima Trio at Mt. Tam Church Jan. 17

1/12/2016

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Prima Trio. Courtesy image.
On Jan. 17, the Mill Valley Chamber Music Society continues its 42nd season of presenting "exceptional classical musicians in Mill Valley at affordable ticket prices" with a performance from the Prima Trio, known for its engaging and lively repertoire of classical and contemporary music. 
 
Prima Trio performs a program of compositions from Mozart, Max Bruch, Glick, Khachaturian, Piazzola, Schickele at 5 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17 at the Mount Tamalpais United Methodist Church in Mill Valley.
 
Described as "a virtuosic tour de force...a whirlwind of joy," by the Palm Beach Daily News, Prima Trio was founded in 2004 while its members (Boris Allakhverdyan, clarinet; Gulia Gurevich, violin; and Anastasia Derik, piano) were studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio.
 
Prima Trio was named Grand Prize and Gold Medal Winners of the prestigious 2007 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. In addition, Prima Trio was awarded a Midwest Winner’s Tour and a European debut at Italy’s Emilia Romagna Festival, as well as a total of $10,500 in prize money.
 
Prima Trio has performed throughout the United States and Europe - including the Chicago Chamber Music Society, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Dumbarton Oaks, La Jolla Athenaeum, the Dayton Art Institute, CityMusic Columbus, Da Camera Society, Fontana Chamber Arts and Cleveland Chamber Music Society and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Music Festival in Germany.
 
The 411: Prima Trio performs at 5pm on Sunday, Jan 17 at the Mount Tamalpais United Methodist Church, 410 Sycamore Ave. Tickets are $18-$35 via Brown Paper Tickets, at 1-800-838-3006 or at the door.

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Arts Commission Seeks Musicians for 2016 Concerts on the Plaza

1/12/2016

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Scenes from the Mill Valley Arts Commission's Concerts on the Plaza. Photos by Quincy Stamper Photography.
Mill Valley musicians: it's already time to make your summer plans.

​The Mill Valley Arts Commission is seeking musicians to perform at its 2016 Concerts on the Plaza series – four outdoor concerts on the Downtown Plaza in August – and has posted the application to do so. Deadline for entries is February 23. Performance dates are Sundays 8/7, 8/17, 8/21 & 8/24.


Concerts are held on the Mill Valley Downtown Plaza, which is a public open air Plaza in the City center surrounded by local retail shops and restaurants. Sound system, audio technician and event publicity will be provided by the Arts Commission. Each selected artist/group will receive $500 payment on the day of the concert. 

All interested musical artists are encouraged to apply. Performers need to be able to play a 45-60 minute set. Performers at the 2015 Concerts in the Plaza series are not eligible to do so again in 2016.

APPLY VIA MAIL OR DROP OFF by Feb. 23, 5pm: Musicians can click here to download aMusican Submission Form to mail or drop off this form and a CD with 3 complete musical selections to Mill Valley Arts Commission c/o Mill Valley Community Center, 180 Camino Alto, MV. Attn:Call for Musicians. Also include a check for $20 submission fee, payable toCity of Mill Valley or Am Express, Discover, MasterCard or Visa information. A receipt will be emailed to you for proof of payment once CD and payment is received.

APPLY VIA ONLINE FORM by Feb 23, 5pm: Musicians can click here to complete an online Musical Artist Submission Form and then mail  or drop off a CD with 3 complete musical selections clearly labeled with Artist or Group name and contact information to Mill Valley Arts Commission, c/o Mill Valley Community Center 180 Camino Alto, MV. Attn: Call for Musicians. Also include a check for $20 submission fee, payable to City of Mill Valley or Am Express, Discover, MasterCard or Visa information. A receipt will be emailed to you for proof of payment once CD and payment is received.

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New Poet and/the Bench Shop Oozes Creative Energy

1/11/2016

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Fledgling Locust Ave. lifestyle store and jewelry atelier hosts an opening reception and party on January 30 (1–5pm) celebrating "the upcoming month of love" as well as jewelry designer Danielle Welmond and photographer/designer Nico van Dongen.
A step into the new Poet and/the Bench space on Locust Ave. reveals far more than the newest jewelry shop in town – it’s a walk through the life that its owners have created together, a celebration of craftsmanship, creativity and a love for the arts.

Jeffrey Levin and Bonnie Powers opened Poet and/the Bench at 10E Locust Ave. in late 2015, building on Levin’s 30 years as a jewelry maker and goldsmith, a career spent in nearly every aspect of the jewelry business, from model making to distribution and retail.

The couple describe Poet and/the Bench as “their lifestyle store and jewelry atelier inspired by and celebrating beautifully crafted objects and the narrative behind each one.” The space has two primary components.

First and foremost is Levin’s retail shop and workspace, including the vintage bench he found in the late 1980s in New York City that serves as one half of the shop’s moniker, as Levin for years has referred to going to work on his jewelry craft as “getting on the bench.”

The other half of that name reflects the second and overarching focus of Poet and/the Bench. The couple wanted to expand “the philosophy of the store to include all makers who all work on a bench of some sort and the poetry of what is created,” Levin says. “We arrived at the name at the end of a brainstorming session and when it was floating in the air, we just stopped. It was the right name.”

Poet and/the Bench celebrates makers by exhibiting the work of artists they love. As a result, the shop’s relatively small space is bursting with creative energy. Levin’s jewelry is intermingled with art installations from the likes of Adele Crawford, Lisa Joss and Bob Dinetz, as well as Gallery for Good, an ongoing initiative of donation-based tiny art with 100 percent of proceeds to the organization FORCE, which provides support to women and men with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. This first installation comes from Hatch, the San Francisco creative design agency for which Powers is the managing director.  

​“Both of us have been collecting art and things for our entire lives,” Levin says. “When we thought of the shop, we knew that we wanted it to be a lot like our home, where you invite people into your personal tastes with design and decor.”

The myriad works of art add a unique flavor to Poet and/the Bench, complementing Levin’s jewelry, a mix of precious metals, gems and natural materials, including the hearts and crosses pieces that are among his signatures.

Levin began his career in jewelry in his native South Africa in his early 20s, apprenticing with Franz Huppertz in Cape Town and other outfits in Johannesburg lecturing on his craft to other jewelry apprentices. Levin moved to New York City in 1986, as “things were drying up in South Africa” and his brother already lived in Manhattan.

Four years later, he fled the harsh winters of the Northeast and moved to Los Angeles, where he became immersed in the community in and around Santa Monica. He quickly made a name for himself, making masters for designers to make a mold of and then manufacture.

“That’s what I’ve done for the bulk of my career,” he says. “There’s nothing to sell without the master.”

Levin combined his master-making and design expertise into the wholesale side of the business in the mid-1990s at his own firm called u+i. He then served as partner and chief operating officer of Julez Bryant, overseeing daily operations and national branding and sales strategy performing all modelmaking.

Each of those steps in the journey gave Levin a handle on all aspects of the business. In the years since he and Powers met in 2006, they’ve known they’d eventually like to open a shop like Poet and/the Bench. They moved to Marin in 2014 and Levin continued working out of a space in Sausalito. When they found the space on Locust Ave., they were drawn to the emergence of the Mill Valley Design District, as a confluence of design-oriented businesses have opened on and around Miller and Locust avenues in recent years.

“There’s a great energy around here right now,” Levin says.

Appropriately enough, Poet and/the Bench's January 30th opening party (1–5pm) is a celebration of "the upcoming month of love" as well as the latest designers to be incorporated into the space, including jewelry designer Danielle Welmond, known for "weaving gems with fine threads and precious metals. Her signature lace making is delicate and feminine and we're in love." The event also features the work of photographer and designer Nico van Dongen, whose "Tulipa Erotica" exhibit "celebrates common objects' personification through magnification. Removed from their environment, his subjects become transformed. In this series, he reveals the seductive and whimsical."
​
The 411: Poet and/the Bench is at 10E Locust Ave. More info.

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With Mill Valley Roots, Avatar’s-Inspired Dabba Readies San Francisco Restaurant

1/6/2016

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A popular food truck that has been serving up “Indian flavors wrapped in a California state of mind” all over the Bay Area for the past year will soon be one of San Francisco’s newest restaurants – and its roots are in Mill Valley.

“We are proud to be born in Mill Valley,” longtime local entrepreneur Andy Mercy says of Dabba, which he calls “a combination of the bold, intricate flavors of India (and other places) with the fresh and healthy sensibilities of Northern California.” Mercy launched the business a year ago and has made strides over that time, creating a Dabba food truck that allowed he and chef Walter Abrams to test and develop the menu. They plan to open their first Dabba restaurant at 71 Stevenson Ave. in the SF's Financial District in April.

Dabba’s origin traces back to Avatar’s, the Indian restaurant that the late Avatar Ubhi opened in Sausalito in 1989 and is best known locally for the India-meets-Mexico cuisine at Avatar's Punjabi Burritos shop that opened in Mill Valley seven years later. Avatar’s, which also includes locations in Larkspur and Fairfax, is owned by Ashok Kumar, his wife Saru and Kumar’s sister, Kala Ubhi.

“The original inspiration was the food, plain and simple,” says Mercy, a former president of the Mill Valley Library Foundation board. “But just as importantly was the desire to provide healthier options for people who are eating on the go. It was the philosophical meeting the culinary.”

For many years, Avatar’s in Sausalito provided a near-weekly lunch to Angel Points, Mercy’s software firm that sought to help large companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement. When he sold the business in 2011, Mercy approached Kumar, who he’d gotten to know quite well over the years, about the idea for Dabba, which means “lunchbox” in Hindi and lends itself to the tagline “a little Dabba’ll do ya.”

“He was very excited right away,” Mercy says.

“It’s a great idea,” says Kumar. “I’ve known Andy a long time, and it’s a great way to bring our food to more people.”

The first step was actually writing down the recipes Avatar’s had been using for decades, as they’d never done so.
“There was a little bit of anthropological work to do so that we could reproduce them,” Mercy says.

Mercy then found Abrams, the Michelin-rated chef whose background includes stints at Bay Area stalwarts like The French Laundry and Spruce. “He’s an amazing guy and he fell in love with Avatar’s and our concept,” Mercy says. “Having a chef on board who I knew could produce the food just as well if not better was important – that was critical.”

Mercy raised money from a number of local investors, including some of the partners of Mill Valley Labs. He says he drew on his experience running Angel Points in developing the business, specifically in being “agile,” the software industry mantra of being nimble, responsive, keeping things simple and welcoming change.

“For us, it was about not spending a ton of money up front, figuring out quickly whether you have something and continuing to iterate on on it,” Mercy says. “The truck was our opportunity to be agile, taking the food right to our customers and getting feedback.”

That meant incorporating fresh local and organic ingredients and adjusting the menu, focusing on Indian-inspired bowls, and burritos and tacos made with paratha flatbread, while largely “staying very true to the foundation of Avatar’s,” Mercy says.

With the truck serving up Dabba's “fast food made really slow” at private events and food truck hubs like Off the Grid and SoMa StrEat Food Park, the next piece for the Dabba team was finding the right physical space in the increasingly expensive San Francisco real estate market.

The space at 71 Stevenson –  between First and Second, and Market and Mission streets – is “a great fit,” Mercy says, and began renovating it last month.

The 2,000-square-foot restaurant will focus heavily on the fast-paced lunchtime and post-work crowd on a block that’s become a foodie alley with fellow neighbors Louie's Bar and Uno Dos Tacos, as well as longtime dim sum standby Yank Sing. Dabba will have seating for 30 people inside and another 30-40 outside, Mercy says. Because of Dabba’s location, and Mercy’s experience running a company that relied heavily on Avatar’s combination of service, speed and deliciousness, a big piece of the business will be catering.
​

The 411: Dabba is set to open its first restaurant at 71 Stevenson Street in San Francisco in April. More info.

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'Bikelet' Bike Parking Area Outside Equator Is On the Way

1/4/2016

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Cyclists looking to hit Equator Coffees & Teas on Miller and Throckmorton avenues can rejoice: that caffeinated jolt before heading up Mount Tam is about to get a bit easier.

Workers this week are installing
 a pilot “bikelet,” or bike parking area, outside Equator Coffees & Teas at Miller and Throckmorton avenues.


The project includes the installation of standard metal u-racks that would accommodate up to 10 bicycles in one parking space just outside of Equator at 2 Miller Avenue. The pilot bike parking area will have planters on either end of the space and a painted pattern on the street surface to further designate it.

Though the City has been eyeing a pilot project of this sort for some time, the owners of Equator have sought to add bike parking for their customers and the larger bicycling community. Equator donated all materials and installation and maintenance of the facility. All components of the bike parking area would belong to Equator and would be constructed in such way that they could be easily removed if the project proves to not be successful.

The proposal was recommended by the City’s the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC), which made the installation of new bicycle parking facilities a priority in its 2014 Annual Report and its forthcoming update of its 2008 Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan.

Here's a rendering of what it will look like:

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Shane Kennedy Showcases Mixed Media Art at MV Chamber in Jan. – Get Your First Tuesday Artwalk 411 Here

1/2/2016

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Through all its changes over the years, one fact has remained true of Mill Valley: the person sitting next to you at Peet’s or behind you in line at the Market likely has one heck of a back story.

That is definitely true of longtime local fixture Shane Kennedy, one of the most well regarded soccer coaches in Marin and an artist whose career has spanned decades and myriad mediums, including exhibits in New York, Los Angeles, Memphis and San Francisco.

Kennedy showcases his work, including paintings and mixed media pieces featuring found objects, throughout January at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center (85 Throckmorton, with a wine reception on January 5 (6–8pm) as part of the Mill Valley Arts Commission's First Tuesday Artwalk.

The monthly celebration of local art includes a host of venues, including the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Seager Gray Gallery, the Mill Valley Public Library, Zener Schon Contemporary Art, Gelateria Noci, Julie Tuton Boutique, Terrestra, the Depot Bookstore & Café, City Hall, Famous4 and the Mill Valley Community Center, Seager Gray Gallery and the Throckmorton Theatre. Receptions at each venue are Tuesday from 6–8pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.

Kennedy has lived in Mill Valley for nearly three decades, having moved here from New York in 1988. The decade-plus prior to that cross-country relocation found Kennedy immersed in the “art furniture” movement in 1980s New York City, where his work under the name Furniture Club blended simple shapes with dyed concrete and steel and was the subject of a New York Times’ feature story in 1984.

But it was the decade prior that saw Kennedy perfecting a different art: preventing some of the world’s best soccer players from scoring goals on him. A state champion goalkeeper at Staples High School in Westport, Ct. in 1972, Kennedy went on to win a national championship as a team captain at NCAA Div. III Babson College in 1975. He set an NCAA career record for shutouts at Babson and was named Soccer America’s All-Collegiate Most Valuable Player.

In 1976, Kennedy was drafted by the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League whose roster then included Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia, and legendary American goalie Shep Messing. Despite his success as an artist, Kennedy is perhaps best known in the Bay Area as a go-to coach for aspiring goalkeepers.

Whether it’s his own Dominate the Box teaching school, as head girls soccer coach at Tam High or as assistant men’s coach at Dominican University, Kennedy has had a hand in shaping some of the best young goalkeepers to come out of Marin for years.

When he relocated to the Bay Area, Kennedy scratched his artistic itch by turning to junkyards, dumpsters and flea markets, giving an array of found objects a second life through his creations, from welded masks and totems to constructions and collages.

“Working quickly and without plan,” Kennedy says he “looks for moments to start and stop and capture the unexpected.”

The 411: Shane Kennedy exhibits his artwork at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center, 85 Throckmorton Avenue, throughout June. The First Tuesday Artwalk receptions are Tuesday, June 2, 6–8pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.

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