Having tackled The Wizard of Oz, Annie, Sound of Music and High School Musical over the past four years, the Mill Valley Middle School’s Cabaret explores the world of Peter Pan, the wildly successful theatrical adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s 1902 book about the free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up. Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys, interacting with fairies, pirates, and occasionally ordinary children from the world, all while facing the villainous Captain Hook and the dreaded tick-tock of the crocodile.
​
The 411: The Mill Valley Middle School Cabaret takes on Peter Pan with a trio of performances on Feb. 28 (7:30pm), Feb. 29 (7:30pm) and March 1 (1pm). Tix are $20 for adults and $10 for kids. MVMS Gym, 425 Sycamore Ave. Tix available on the day of each performance 30 minutes prior to show time (cash or check only). MORE INFO & BUY TIX.

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

​When former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Meredith May was a young child, she moved with her mother and younger brother from Rhode Island to Carmel Valley to stay with their grandparents "as their mother descended into depression," according to the Chronicle. 

The years that followed, during which May grew extremely close with E. Franklin Peace, an eccentric plumber and beekeeper and May's step-grandfather "who made honey in an old military bus in Carmel Valley in the 1970s. There she found refuge from her turbulent childhood home and a model for benevolent human relationships in the magical world of bees." That relationship serves as the foundation of The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees, May's 2019 memoir, which she'll discuss at a free event at the Outdoor Art Club on Thursday, Feb. 20 at 1pm.

May is a fifth-generation beekeeper who keeps six hives in San Francisco’s Connecticut Friendship Garden. She also previously spent 16 years as a reporter and feature writer for the Chronicle, for which she was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize for her Operation Lion Heart series that documented a 10-year-old boy’s recovery from a devastating explosion in Iraq.

After completing a draft of The Honey Bus in 2015, May left the Chronicle and "had a few nibbles, no bites” from agents. Over time and through another writing experience, she realized The Honey Bus was essentially a “monster-mom memoir" that needed a higher calling.

"My story’s more about the unusual, lovely way I was rescued by my grandfather and the bees," she told the Chronicle in 2019. “He spoke in metaphors, using the bees as examples of the proper way to behave. What he found noble and admirable in the way bees lived translated into his moral code for humankind.”

The 411: Beekeeper and former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Meredith May discusses her 2019 memoir The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees at the Outdoor Art Club on Thursday, Feb. 20 at 1pm. Free. One West Blithedale Avenue, Mill Valley.

​Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

The Mill Valley Philharmonic continues its blockbuster season-long 20th anniversary celebration on Sunday, March 15 with a Gala Concert at the Mill Valley Community Center featuring artistic director Dana Sadava and SF Conservatory of Music faculty member and renowned cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau.

The gala features a special concert by MVP, followed by a party with complimentary fine wine, craft beer, sweet and savory nibbles, and a silent auction. The orchestra is set to perform Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s popular and virtuosic Scheherazade, Op. 35, with Fonteneau performing Édouard Lalo’s Cello Concerto in D Minor. MVP previews the program at a Free Preview Performance on Wednesday, March 11 at 7pm, with a full concert on Friday, March 13 at 7:30pm – both at Mt. Tamalpais United Methodist Church in Mill Valley. Subsequent performances run through May 2020.

The 2019-20 season of the nonprofit organization, whose mission of MVP is "to enrich the cultural life of the Bay Area by offering orchestral programs to people of all ages and means in their own communities," comes on the heels of the retirement of its founder and artistic director Laurie Cohen in 2018, the arrival of a new executive director in Richard Aldag and the subsequent selection of Sadava to be its artistic director.

The 411: Mill Valley Philharmonic continues its blockbuster season-long 20th anniversary celebration on Sunday, March 15 with a Gala Concert at the Mill Valley Community Center. Two concerts precede the gala concert. MORE INFO & TIX. 

​Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

With Noura, which runs through Feb. 9, Marin Theatre Company has once again cooked up a thought-provoking production laced with issues like identity crisis, motherhood, marriage and the fragile architecture of what we call home.

For Noura and her family, a Christmas celebration at their home in New York City begins as a toast to their eight years in the United States after fleeing Mosul, Iraq, but then becomes something else entirely, largely driven by the arrival of a visitor who stirs up long-buried memories.

The play is drawing great reviews, with the Marin Independent Journal theater critic Sam Hurwitt noting the characters grappling "with what to keep of their traditions and cultural attitudes from a home that is completely destroyed and never coming back." Hurwitt lauds Kate Boyd’s lighting and Nihan Yesil’s sound design in punctuating provocative lines with "flickering lights and bursts of sound — talking, tense music — a literal audiovisual representation of post-traumatic stress disorder."

​In the Pacific Sun, Harry Duke notes that Heather Raffo "packs a lot into her 90-minute examination of a woman on the edge" and serves up "an interesting take on the modern émigré experience."


The 411: Marin Theatre Co., 397 Miller Ave. Tix $10-$40. MORE INFO.

​Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email

​Equator Coffees is no stranger to plaudits, but co-founder Helen Russell says they're over the moon about their latest honor: a 2020 Good Food Award, one of less than two dozen doled out in the coffee division, which had more than 250 entries across the United States. 

Equator won for its submission of Hacienda La Esmeralda’s Gesha grown in the highlands of Boquete, Panama. Equator officials received the award from the legendary Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters.

The coffee is from Panama’s renowned Hacienda La Esmeralda, a farm owned and operated by the Peterson family since 1967. Esmeralda has become famous for its production of the Gesha variety.

​This fame resulted from a trial conducted on the farm in 2002 to isolate Gesha cherries from fruit of those of other varieties. The result was the discovery of the exceptional cup quality found in this low yielding cultivar. 

Equator Coffees has been buying coffee from Hacienda La Esmeralda for more than 10 years, both directly and through their private auction. This washed processed lot comes from the Bosque plot of Finca Jaramillo, one of the Peterson's several farms.

Due to limited availability and to maintain freshness, Equator will be roasting this coffee once a week on Wednesday. Order now and they will roast and ship the following Wednesday. MORE INFO.

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

To hear Ed Hardy tell it, when he was growing up in the 1950s, most kids his age dreamt of growing up to be firemen or jet pilots – there weren't even astronauts yet. But Hardy had the wild idea of becoming a tattoo artist, seeing skin art as his calling in the mystical images of pierced hearts, flaming eyeballs and bloody skulls. Hardy's incredible career saw him grow from tattoo artist to fashion brand and cultural icon.

Bay Area filmmaker Wendy Slick decided to make a film about Hardy's journey a few years ago, and the folks at the O'Hanlon Center for the Arts are featuring the documentary at its regular Art Film Fridays series on Friday, Jan. 24 at 6:30pm. 616 Throckmorton Avenue. $10. MORE INFO.

Here's a short trailer:

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

There’s no shortage of business owners in Mill Valley for whom their current professional pursuit is a second or even third chapter. Many of them put their careers on pause to raise their children and then dipped their toes back into the business world as their kids got older.

Some of that arc describes the journey of Quynh Nguyen, owner of Wink Optics on Throckmorton Ave. downtown – except for the part of the toe dipping.

“I didn’t just dabble – I have thrown myself completely into this business,” she says about Wink, whose state board certified opticians play a similar role as a pharmacist in relation to a doctor. “We style and adjust to make sure the prescription fits the frame.”

Nguyen’s first career was in supply chain management for a major pharmaceutical company in San Diego. Nguyen says and her husband, who is in commercial construction management for DPR Construction, chose to move to Mill Valley for a variety of reasons.

“We wanted to live in an area where we didn’t have to move every few years every time a project was finished,” says Nguyen, who also has a brother in Sunnyvale and sister-in-law in San Rafael. “And obviously Mill Valley is such a great place to live  and the school system is exceptional.

She took some time off after she had her twin daughters, and later took a job with an eyeglasses frame sales company job so she could have more flexibility with her daughters. 

Through that role, Nguyen met Michael Quinn, who owned an eponymous optician shop at 70 Throckmorton Ave. downtown that he’d operated since 1989. Quinn eventually sought to sell the shop, and Nguyen and her business partner Frank Gomez, who also owns Wink locations in San Anselmo and Ukiah, bought the business from him in July 2009.

While Nguyen is deeply involved in the day-to-day at Wink, she’s just as involved in raising her twin 8th grade daughters Grace and Lauren, who play both CYO basketball and competitive volleyball, the latter through the Firebolts Volleyball Club, which Nguyen created. “There was definitely a need for an avenue for these girls to continue their volleyball.”

Nguyen seems to have struck the perfect balance between operating her own small business, playing a vital role in Marin's youth sports programs and 

The 411: Wink Optics is at 70 Throckmorton Avenue. MORE INFO. ​

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

Terra Marin School and the Terra Mandarin Preschool & TK, which opened in late 2018 in the former Ring Mountain Day School space on Lomita Drive in Mill Valley, is ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year with a multi-faceted event on Saturday, Jan. 25 (10am-2pm) featuring an array of food and activities, including authentic dragon dance, martial arts demonstrations and classes, arts and crafts and noodle making, raffle prizes and more.

The community-wide event is open to the public with all ages are welcome. Tix are $5 in advance and $7 at the door. Fee covers entrance and activities. Food and raffle sold separately.

The 411: Terra Marin School and the Terra Mandarin Preschool & TK hosts a Chinese New Year Community Celebration on Saturday, Jan. 25 (10am-2pm) featuring an array of food and activities, including authentic dragon dance, martial arts demonstrations and classes, arts and crafts and noodle making, raffle prizes and more. The event is open to the public with all ages are welcome. Tix are $5 in advance and $7 at the door. Fee covers entrance and activities. Food and raffle sold separately. MORE INFO & BUY TIX.

​Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

Redwood Credit Union, which opened a full-service branch in the Alto Plaza Shopping Center in late 2016, is celebrating 70 years in business in 2020. The credit union, which was originally formed by seven County of Sonoma employees as an affordable means to make bridge loans to fellow employees between paychecks, has grown to offer full service personal and business banking, as well as financial services beyond banking such as financial planning, insurance, and even an auto sales center.

Founded in 1950 as Sonoma County Employees Credit Union, that entity merged  in 1982 with Santa Rosa Public Employees Credit Union and rebranded as Redwood Credit Union to reflect its growing presence in the Redwood Empire. In 1997, RCU expanded its field of membership to serve anyone living or working in the five North Bay counties of Sonoma, Marin, Mendocino, Lake, and Napa. And in 2000, RCU received approval to serve residents and businesses in the three additional counties of San Francisco, Solano, and Contra Costa.

RCU now has 19 locations throughout the North Bay and San Francisco, and is the 43rd largest credit union in the U.S. and 8th largest in California.

“Though we’ve grown and added many services and locations over the past 70 years, helping people has always been at the heart of what we do,” said Brett Martinez, RCU President & CEO. “We’re thankful for our 353,000 members, and through their loyalty and participation—as well as the dedication of our 700 employees—we have a solid foundation to continue providing affordable financial services and support to our communities for many more decades to come.”

The 411: Redwood Credit Union Is located at 695 East Blithedale Ave. in the Alto Plaza shopping center that contains Whole Foods Market. MORE INFO.

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

Mill Valley resident Chelsea Hutchison, owner of the BŌL superfood cafe in the Mill Valley Lumber Yard, is a realist.
​
"With two kids, a partner and a healthy coffee obsession we are far from a 100 percent reusable family, but by golly, we are trying," she says of her desire to make a positive impact on the climate crisis. "Some days I imagine my girls asking me why we didn't do more for the environment when we had the chance. Why a single use container for a coffee, a water, a soup, a salad was more important than their future."

Hutchison says she chats regularly with Molly de Vries’ Ambatalia, the MVLY-based designer and maker of "modern ecological textiles to support a non-disposable life," about the complicated compost and recycling landscape. Those chats helped her arrive at some clarity: "You know what isn't complicated? Reusables," she says.

For the past few months, BŌL has been participating in an international movement called #plasticfreefridays and providing mason jars for all beverages leaving BŌL. No plastic leaves the premises. Everything is either 100 percent compostable in Marin or reusable. BŌL charges a $2 deposit for the glass and have UKonserve stainless steel bowls for purchase, with customers getting a 50-cent discount off a beverage or $1 off a bol if they bring their own reusable container (they must be clean). 

"So far it's been a great success and having Molly's blessing gives us great hope for the future of #zerowastemarin!" Hutchison says. "Small steps. Big impact."

​Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

Mill Valley Music owner Gary Scheuenstuhl never lets an anniversary for his fabled Miller Avenue record shop go by without gathering his stable of all-star musician friends for a raucous concert at the Throckmorton Theatre to celebrate the occasion. The 2020 edition – for Mill Valley Music's 12th anniversary – is set for Saturday, Feb. 8 and looks to be another star-studded doozy.

Scheuenstuhl and friends, including local stalwarts Cole Tate, Mikaele Tate, Jesse Lee Kincaid, Neal McDonald, Mari Mack, will perform the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet album in full, plus selections from the Stones' Sticky Fingers” and Let It Bleed albums. 

"Join us this year to celebrate 12 incredible years of business!" Scheuenstuhl says.

The 411: Mill Valley Music owner Gary Scheuenstuhl hosts a concert at the Throckmorton Theatre to celebrate his shops 12th anniversary on Saturday, Feb. 8. 8pm. $25-$35. MORE INFO & TIX.

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

Point Reyes artist Charles Eckart has had no shortage of stunning vistas and landscapes from which to draw inspiration in his lifetime. Eckart grew up in Yosemite across a meadow from the Ahwahnee Hotel and in view of Half Dome, his early everyday experience was of breathtaking vistas, drawing influence from the Yose­mite Museum’s col­lection of works by Thomas Hill, Albert Bier­stadt and Thomas Moran, honing his skills in both draftsmanship and painting.  

On February 2, Eckart celebrates his 85th birthday with a reception for his solo exhibition at Seager Gray Gallery in Mill Valley running from February 1 to March 1. The title of the show, “For the Love of Paint,” reflects Eckart’s belief in the expressive powers of pure pigment. The series, “Paintscapes” is a natural evolution of his work in his earlier “Ground Cover Series” incorporating layer upon layer of paint strokes in endlessly satisfying compositions. 

After an arts education at the University of the Pacific and the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, followed by a stint as an award-winning Art Director at the prestigious advertising firm McCann Erickson, Eckart's early works focused on commuter drawings of his observations in the city and precise rendering of his San Francisco environment. But he became bored.

“All of the creative work was done in the planning up front,” he say, noting that he then surrendered to a more interactive process, resulting in a series of winged figures rising out of amorphous backgrounds of color. Eckart became friendly with Charles Campbell, often visiting him in his North Beach Gallery where he showed such greats as Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, Nathan Oliveira, Hassell Smith, Elmer Bischoff, Christopher Brown and James Weeks. 

“Charlie had a way of engaging people,” recalls Eckart. “He knew how to get people interested in the paintings and want to own them.” In 1985, Eckart, known to friends as Chuck, moved with his wife Alice to West Marin, where the natural surroundings echoed for him the original visual sensations that had always inspired him. He remembers clearly looking down at an area of ground covered with grass, dirt and leaves with their drying edges curling upward.  

“It was a visual epiphany – an 'aha' moment,” he recalls. 

Eckart began his series of “Ground Cover” paintings, works that were built rather than drawn with layers of paint patiently and deliberately applied. Of these works at Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker wrote “for all their honest materialism, Eckart’s paintings feel suffused with soul. They read as true reports of the entanglement of decisions, acts and recognitions that composes any one of us . . . Eckart locates, or brings into being, a focal plane where we can dwell on the pleasure of seeing paint regain the materiality it sacrifices to subject matter in most figuration.”

"Eckart’s virtuosity as a painter stems from an intimate understanding and love of his material," says Seager Gray Gallery co-owner Donna Seager. "He knows how oil paint behaves and is continually finding ways of pushing the boundaries of what he can do with it. In his words, he has learned to 'listen to the paint.'”
​
The 411: Point Reyes artist Charles Eckart celebrates his 85th birthday with a reception and solo exhibition at Seager Gray Gallery in Mill Valley running from February 1 to March 1. The exhibit is titled “For the Love of Paint.” MORE INFO.

​Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

Panelists from the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative, the Mill Valley Planning Department and the Marin County Community Development Agency gather at the Outdoor Art Club on Thursday, Feb. 6 to discuss priorities and opportunities for affordable housing in Marin, and identify common values on this important subject.

The Outdoor Art Club Is at 1 West Blithedale. 1pm. Free. MORE INFO.


​Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

As part of our EMV Films series highlighting some of the myriad creative businesses, organizations and people in Mill Valley, we're spotlighting the amazing network of health and fitness-oriented businesses in Mill Valley, particularly Fitwise Pilates, SF Running Co. and Body Kinetics Health Club. We'll be highlighting more businesses, nonprofits and arts organizations throughout 2020!

Every month offers an chance to get your body right. But the dawn of a new year tends to inject a shot of inspiration to most of us looking to shed a few pounds, recapture the zest for exercise or set a new personal best in your sport of choice. Few Bay Area towns have more businesses per capita equipped to help you do so than Mill Valley, and we're highlighting three of them here. 

Ronda Priestner, founder of Fitwise Pilates in downtown Mill Valley, gets us started off with a quote from Joseph Pilates: "physical fitness is the first prerequisite of happiness." She adds her own belief "that pilates helps you to articulate your spine and when your spine is flexible, you are young."

We then meet Jorge Maravilla, one of the founders of SF Running Co. in Tam Junction and a winner of the San Francisco Marathon, who says he discovered running in his youth "as this huge movement that allowed me to feel free and be a part of something."

Body Kinetics Trainer Lisa Schuller then bursts onto the screen with a bounty of verve, saying that "exercise absolutely will change your life." "I believe in health and wellness, and I believe that the addition of music and the camaraderie of the group is fun and it is magic," she adds. 

Video by Summertime Films, commissioned by the Mill Valley Chamber. Thanks to Norm Hunter and his team. Many more films to come showcasing the boundless innovation, community vitality and entrepreneurial spirit of Mill Valley.

Here are some of the previous videos from our Enjoy Mill Valley Film Series:

Mill Valley's Foundational, Historic Businesses

Inspired Chefs

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

Confused by the seemingly never-ending fluidity of the recycling, compost and garbage landscape? Join the club.

The folks at the Outdoor Art Club are hoping they can clear up some of the confusion by hosting a free "Talking About Trash" forum on Thursday, Jan. 30 at 1pm. The event features Jennifer Selvig of Marin Sanitary Service and Jim Iavarone of Mill Valley Refuse on the current state of trash in Marin County, including dual recycling, what can and can no longer be recycled, the growing focus on composting, evolving state laws and regulations, and how you can adapt your product usage and recycling for maximum environmental impact. Small kitchen composting buckets will be available at the event.

The global waste conundrum began when China invoked its “National Sword” policy in 2018, banning the import of most plastics and other materials headed for its recycling processors, which had handled nearly half of the world’s recyclable waste for the past quarter century, the recycling world in particular has been in a tailspin. The move was an effort to halt a deluge of soiled and contaminated materials that was overwhelming Chinese processing facilities and leaving the country with yet another environmental problem — and this one not of its own making.

Since then, the Mill Valley City Council unanimously approved a switch to dual-stream recycling services, backing a proposal by Mill Valley Refuse Service that its officials say has been driven by dwindling options for responsible, cost-effective disposal of paper, cardboard, plastic and glass materials.

"This is the future – we've got to be more responsible with our recyclables," Mayor Jim Wickham said at the time.

"We all need to look at our recyclables as a product to make new stuff, so that the better shape we send it in the better quality of product we'll get back," added Councilwoman Stephanie Moulton-Peters. "The current situation is broken – it doesn't work throughout the country. This is a very good effort to go back to what we were doing years ago. People can change their habits."

In the aftermath of the National Sword policy invocation, China’s plastics imports plummeted by 99 percent, leading to a major global shift in where and how materials tossed in the recycling bin are being processed. That seismic shift has left waste management companies throughout the United States and beyond search for ways to dispose of all that recycling, with some ending up in landfills, incinerators, or likely littering the environment as rising costs to haul away recyclable materials increasingly render the practice unprofitable.

The end result has been skyrocketing costs. According to Mill Valley Refuse Service officials, the company saw recycling revenue shrink to zero in April 2017, and saw its per-ton fees to dispose of it elsewhere go from $4 two years ago to $59 to $72 to $83 today.

"Our efforts to find a better deal at various processing plants in the Bay Area failed," says Iavarone. "Some plants closed their doors, while others refused to take on new customers. MVRS now dumps its single-stream recycling material at a transfer point at the Redwood Landfill in Novato, where it is loaded into semi-trucks and sent to a processing plant in San Jose."

The company has identified disposing its recycled materials at Marin Sanitary Service in San Rafael, but that facility primarily processes dual-stream material, with paper put into one cart and all other recyclables into a separate cart. To test the willingness of customers to adapt to a dual-stream system, MVRS conducted a pilot project from September 2018 to December 2018. It released the results of that project in this report.

The 411: Outdoor Art Club hosts a free "Talking About Trash" forum on Thursday, Jan. 30 at 1pm. The event features Jennifer Selvig of Marin Sanitary Service and Jim Iavarone of Mill Valley Refuse on the current state of refuse in Marin. One West Blithedale Ave. MORE INFO.

And check out this New York Times video about what is and is not recycled after we toss it in the blue bin:

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!