Wee Threads, the longtime purveyor of "recycled kid couture," has closed its brick-and-mortar store at 18 East Blithedale Ave. (Suite 12) downtown in favor of selling exclusively online, according to a note posted on the store's website by owner Teresa Gerould. Wee Threads had been in the space for seven years.

“May 2014 brings some exciting changes - we closed our retail brick-n-mortar shop to more effectively tend to our ever-growing online sales,” Gerould wrote. “We are ‘turning the corner’ and growing in this new direction, due to less overhead costs, time constraints, and a multitude of other factors; basically downsizing operations while at the same time maximizing profits. We want to be where retail is headed - online sales as convenient as your mobile device!”

Gerould wrote that details about Wee Threads’ new online operation are forthcoming.

Mike Walsh of Walsh Construction Company, which owns the building at 18 East Blithedale Avenue, said he's looking for a new tenant for the space. The 750-square-foot space is zoned for retail use. Interested parties can reach out to Walsh at 415.383.2727.


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

Four year-project to restore classic car involved more than 300 students, thousands of parts, more than a dozen sponsors, countless hours and one unbelievably dedicated teacher. May Madness is Saturday, May 31 from 12pm-6pm on Fourth Street in downtown San Rafael.

Tam High automotive technology teacher Lisa Miller is about as passionate and energetic about teaching kids about cars and the skills needed to maintain, repair and even restore them.

But right now, on the heels of a four-year project in which she led more than 300 students through an entire restoration of a 1965 Mustang, Miller could use a breather.

Miller and her legions of students who participated in the restoration will get a chance to see the fruits of their labor on display at the 27th annual May Madness Rock & Rollin' Car Show and Parade on Saturday, May 31, from 12-6pm on Fourth Street in downtown San Rafael. This year’s event celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Mustang.

“It’s going to be great,” Miller said. “This project was a lot of extra time for me. I’m exhausted, quite honestly – but it’s been amazing at the same time.”

Miller runs the Tam High Auto Shop, a full-scale auto repair facility that dates back to 1914. Junior and seniors take automotive technology as an elective, with Miller taking them way beyond car basics and deep into the world of auto systems, technology and infrastructure. Miller and her students do all sorts of real-life work on cars belonging to teachers, parents and fellow students, and bring 30-50 modern cars through the shop every week for maintenance, repair and service.

The shop is always a hive of activity, but since the spring of 2011, when Miller and her students bought a 1965 Mustang in the fall of 2010 for $10,500 at a car show at the Alameda County fairgrounds with the help of a $12,000 grant from the Tam High Foundation, it’s been home to the massive restoration project, with “literally thousands of pieces” coming off the car and going back on.

The project has had plenty of help, including a grant from the State of California and donations of parts from automotive companies throughout the North Bay, including Malugani Tires on Mill Ave., which donated all four tires for the Mustang.

Even though Miller could use the respite of simply focusing on teaching her students by using modern cars for a while, she’s already itching for another big project: her own 1955 Chevy, which she restored nearly 20 years ago and served as the inspiration for the Mustang restoration. Miller thinks now might be the time to restore it again, this time using green technology that didn’t exist when she restored the car the first time.

“These are skills that will last a lifetime for these kids – even if they never touch a car again,” Miller says.

The 411: The 27th Annual May Madness Rock & Rollin' Car Show and Parade is Saturday, May 31 12pm to 6pm, with a parade of cars at 5pm on Fourth Street in downtown San Rafael between Lincoln and "C” streets. The event is free.

Here’s the event’s live music lineup:

• 12pm: Winner of the “Heads Up” Battle of the Bands
  
• 1:45 Fenix House Band– Blues, Rock n Funk from the Fenix Night Club
  
• 3:30 Reckless In Vegas “Modern Rock meets classic ‘60’s Lounge Music”
  

The Mixbook below is a photo journal of the entire Mustang restoration project:

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

Spiritually inspired, with an independent streak.

Those are the prevailing traits among the 190 people and 20 organizations profiled in Legendary Locals of Mill Valley, local author Joyce Kleiner’s tome for Arcadia Publishing, the firm best known for publishing local history books like Claudine Chalmers’ Images of America: Early Mill Valley and Suki Hill’s Then and Now: Mill Valley.

Across its 127 pages, Legendary Locals covers a remarkable amount of ground, with Kleiner, best known locally as a former member of the Mill Valley Parks & Recreation Commission and as the longtime “Civics Lessons” columnist for the Mill Valley Herald. She does so by grouping the book into seven chapters, including "Visionaries and Quiet Champions," ""Bohemia in the Redwoods" and "Foundations and Footraces." 

Kleiner is holding her official book release party on Thursday, May 29 at the Depot Bookstore & Café at 7:30 p.m., followed by a book signing. She has a host of other events in June, including presentation for the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Rotary Club.

Here's our Q&A with Kleiner:

Enjoy Mill Valley: Where are you from originally, and what brought you to Mill Valley? 
Joyce Kleiner: I’m originally from Burlingame, which is south of here, on the Peninsula; I grew up in the house my grandfather built. By the way, that grandfather ran in the first Dipsea Race in 1905. I’ve been married to the same man, Robert, for nearly 25 years. We have one son, Jake, who recently graduated from college and is working in San Francisco as a biochemistry research associate.
We moved to Mill Valley from Potrero Hill in San Francisco when Jake was four (1995). We wanted to live in a greener, more open environment, with a yard and more access to nature. We settled on Mill Valley pretty quickly. Robert and I already knew it very well.

EMV: How about your professional background?
JK: My professional background is a real mixture: I traveled through Spain with a theater company of Hair, I worked as a Pan Am flight attendant for eight years, and I did wine marketing and sales in San Francisco until my son came along. After that I pretty much became a full-time parent volunteer: Co-op preschool, PTA, school site council and so on. Around 2004, I began to give more time to civic causes and committees, including a term on the Mill Valley Parks & Recreation Commission. The City Council appointed me to a second term, but I had to retire early because I went to graduate school for an MFA in creative writing in 2007, as the class schedule conflicted with the commission’s meeting schedule.  In 2007, I began writing a column for the Mill Valley Herald called “Civics Lessons.” I stopped writing the column in 2013, not long before I began working on the book. I’ve also contributed articles to the Mill Valley Historical Society magazine Review for the past two years.

EMV: What do you love most about Mill Valley?
JK: There are so many things I love about it. Obviously, the access to nature and the spectacular green belt that surrounds the town are wonderful. I love that Mill Valley backs up to a national park, meaning we’ll always have a lot of open space just outside our front door.
But what I have come to really appreciate in researching this book is the strong sense of community and roots that Mill Valley has. There are so many multi-generational families living here, and they keep the “narrative” and the traditions of the town alive.

EMV: Mill Valley has changed, for both good and bad, over the years. What do you miss, and what don't you miss, about the way things used to be here?
JK: Change is inevitable, and even though I’ve done a great deal of writing about Mill Valley’s past, I’m not really one for nostalgia. I think that there are many people committed to protecting what makes Mill Valley unique, and I trust them to ensure that the things that are most valuable about Mill Valley endure.
When we moved here, Mill Valley was already an expensive place to buy a home, but there was still some economic diversity. I haven’t lived here long enough to experience the biggest changes, but I am very sad to see our affordable housing options shrink.  So I guess you could say I miss that. It’s harder and harder for Mill Valley’s artists and musicians to remain here, and that’s a real loss.
I wasn’t living here before 1982, but if I had been, I wouldn’t miss the big Greyhound parking lot that used to take up the entire area that is now our Depot Plaza.

EMV: What is the origin of this book? How did you conceive of it? How long ago did you begin thinking about it?
JK: I was very, very lucky. Arcadia Publishing approached me to write this book; they sought me out because of my column. So I didn’t really think about it in advance at all. I had been carrying around lots of thoughts about Mill Valley’s story since I had begun writing the column, though, and ironically I had been wondering if I could write a book about the town. 
Legendary Locals of Mill Valley is a sort of “sampler” of the people who have made Mill Valley what it is. The stories go all the way back to the beginning, and come up to the present day.

EMV: How long did it take to complete the book? What was that process like in terms of how you went about researching interviewing subjects?
JK: From the day I turned in the signed contract to the deadline for turning in the completed manuscript was exactly 8 months. Also, on the day I signed the contract I broke my foot, so I did the first two months of interviews with a cast on my foot and leg. There are a lot of people that live up steep hills or at the bottom of long stairways in Mill Valley!
Arcadia had a very specific number of pages they allotted for the book, with a minimum and maximum number of subjects I could include. So I had parameters that I had to keep in mind all the time. That may have been a blessing in disguise, because I ran across so many fascinating stories that I would never have finished the book if I tried to include them all.
There were certain people I knew, right from the start, that I would include: Some of the town founders and earliest residents, of course, and from more recent times I wanted to include Rita Abrams, Charlie Deal, John Goddard, the Canepa family, and others who we’ve all heard of. I set up interviews with those people, or people who knew them, right away. I also spent a lot of time in all of Marin’s history rooms, tracking down older information. 
Then I went about interviewing people who knew Mill Valley’s story, or an important part of Mill Valley’s story, to get an idea of who else should be included. I spent a lot of time in people’s homes, interviewing them and going through photo albums. I think I figured out that I interviewed at least 100 people. This book also has a photo for every subject, so I had to find, or take, a picture for every person I wrote about.

EMV: What were the criteria for choosing your subjects?
JK: The publisher wanted this book to focus on individual people who had an interesting or touching story, and so I looked for those kind of unique tales. But I also wanted the book to show Mill Valley over the generations, and to try to tell a longer, fuller narrative. So I also looked for people who represented what I considered important moments or elements from Mill Valley’s chronicle. There is one story, for example, about a couple that most people probably have never heard of, Frank and Fran Dittle. They were married before World War II, and lived all their lives in the same house, which Frank had help build when he was a boy. Their story represents a noteworthy change that happened in Mill Valley after World War II.
I also was looking for people who had made a considerable impact either on Mill Valley (people like Dick Jessup and Lucy Mercer) or on the greater world from their Mill Valley base (like Phyllis Faber and Peter Behr).
I wasn’t as interested in including all the famous people who live here, just because they are famous. There had to be more to it. That’s why I included Sammy Hagar and Peter Coyote, for example. They have had a significant influence on Mill Valley, and have both given back a lot to the town.

EMV: In looking at the final group of subjects, what do they – the fact that these people in particular have had such an impact on this town – collectively say about Mill Valley as a place?
JK: After about two months into the interview process I began to see a recurring theme: The people who I wrote about considered Mill Valley exceptional and beautiful and inspiring; some would say spiritually inspiring. There is a kind of old-fashioned “New England-like” community identity here, too. And yet, individually, I kept seeing an independent streak.  There is a theme of non-conformity to Mill Valley’s story; even going back as far as Laura White and the Outdoor Art Club. She really was before her time in many ways.  
And every neighborhood has its own specific personality. Longtime Mill Valleyans feel a real connection with their neighborhoods and their neighbors. I was very surprised to find out just how much of Mill Valley I had never seen before.  There are so many absolutely wonderful little cul-de-sacs of 100-year-old cottages up in the hills that feel like summer camps, and little pocket parks all over the place that add so much to the charm of the town. This is “Greater Mill Valley” I’m talking about, the whole 94941 area code.
I would say I learned that Mill Valley, as a place, inspires with its beauty, and encourages both community and non-conformity, in equal measures.

The 411: For more info and to buy Joyce Kleiner's Legendary Locals of Mill Valley, visit the book's website or Facebook page. Click here to see the list of events to promote the book, and go here to see those events in the Enjoy Mill Valley calendar.

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

The 94941's day-long event of the year kicked off with the Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association's annual Pancake Breakfast and a remembrance service at Lytton Square and ended with the Kiddo! Carnival, Concert on the Green and Community Celebration – with a massive Memorial Day Parade thrown in for good measure. Check out photos from throughout the day below.

In addition to the photos above, here's a fantastic video from Mill Valley filmmaker Gary Yost about the Greenwood School's entry in the 2014 Mill Valley Memorial Day Parade:

The biggest day-long party of the year in the 94941, the Memorial Day Parade, along with the pre-parade Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters’ Association’s Pancake Breakfast and the post-parade Kiddo! Memorial Day Community Celebration and Concert on the Green, is upon us. 

Carnival
The four-day Carnival, which begins Friday at noon and wraps up at 5 p.m. Monday. More than 15 rides, from the Berry-Go-Round and Tune Train for little ones to the Sizzler, Zipper, Tilt-A-Whirl and Texas Tornado, are being provided by Sacramento-based California Carnival Company. After an eight-year hiatus, the Carnival was revived in 2012 as part of the 30th anniversary party for Kiddo. The event has become the centerpiece of Memorial Day weekend on the property around the Community Center and Mill Valley Middle School.

After an eight-year hiatus, the Carnival was revived in 2012 as part of the 30th anniversary party for Kiddo. The event has become the centerpiece of Memorial Day weekend on the property around the Community Center and Mill Valley Middle School.

Advance $20 ticket books are available in the Kiddo! office at the Mill Valley School District from May 19 May 22 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on May 23 from 9 a.m. to noon. Ticket books are $30 once the carnival begins. Books may be turned in for a one-day wrist band for unlimited rides. Food and games are extra.

Pancake Breakfast
Memorial Day events kicks off with the Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association's annual Pancake Breakfast, with volunteers serving up some 1,500 to 2,000 plates of pancakes, eggs and sausage, and lines forming around the block outside the Mill Valley Fire Department’s downtown station. The massive event is set for 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on traffic-free Corte Madera Ave. in front of City Hall and outside the fire station.

Memorial Day Parade

The Memorial Day Parade kicks off at 10:30 a.m., with the Mill Valley Community Church selling fresh coffee and donuts, bottled water and chocolate milk at the corner of Throckmorton & Olive from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. In response to calls from veterans to make the event more traditional, the I Love a Parade Committee is building this year's parade around the theme of “Honoring Those Who Gave Their Lives for Freedom.” 

Organizers have scheduled a ceremony prior to the parade to honor soldiers from Mill Valley who died during war. The ceremony will be held at Lytton Square, the tree-laden island that splits Throckmorton Ave. between Miller and Corte Madera avenues into two. The island is named for Lytton Barber, Mill Valley’s first WWI casualty.

I Love a Parade Committee Chair Larry "the Hat" Lautzker said that while the parade will be much more inclusive of Mill Valley’s original Memorial Day Parade, it won’t lose the community party spirit that has been so evident over the past decade. The parade, which runs down Miller Avenue to Tam High, regularly draws more than 6,000 spectators each year, and includes more than 60 participants. 

Kiddo! Memorial Day Community Celebration
When the float riders, school bands, dignitaries and a bevy of youth groups head to the Mill Valley Community Center after the parade, they’ll have a plenty of fun in front of them.

In addition to the Carnival, tasty treats will be served up by the likes of:

• Zen Grill
• Piazza D’Angelo
• Beth’s Community Kitchen
• Good Foods Catering
• Tru Gourmet
• Noci
• Kernel Steve’s Kettle Corn
• Nothing Bundt Cakes
• Laughing Glass Cocktails
• Lagunitas Brewing Company
• Whole Foods Market, East Blithedale Store

Concert on the Green
If food, floats and furious Carnival rides don't quite satiate you, the annual post-parade musical celebration produced by the Sweetwater Music Hall should do the trick. 

Local prodigies Matt Jaffe & the Distractions get things started at noon. The band – Mill Valley singer-songwriter Matt Jaffe is a local prodigy and a music industry veteran at just 19 years old, with Terra Linda resident Alex Coltharp on drums and Novato musician Sammie Fischer on bass – plays a sharp brand of smart indie rock, drawing on a range of influences from the Talking Heads and Ted Leo & The Pharmacists to the Decemberists and Django Reinhardt.

Dan Lebowitz, a founding member of jam band ALO, makes frequent appearances at the Sweetwater Music Hall, including a pair of upcoming performances with the likes of Jason Crosby, Stu Allen, Reed Mathis of Tea Leaf Green and Lukas Nelson, many of whom will be joining Lebo for a set that promises to be a foot-stomper.

Nearly 20 years after his death, the legend of Jerry Garcia continues to reverberates around the world, perhaps nowhere more than in Marin and Mill Valley, where the Grateful Dead god lived for years and where he regularly held court at the old Sweetwater.

Garcia's musical interests were famously varied, and he had a slew of side projects, including his eponymous band, which played rock music that was influenced by blues, folks, country and jazz and also performed rock versions of R&B, roots and reggae songs. Other than bassist John Kahn, Melvin Seals had the longest-serving tenure in the band before Garcia's death, and he has carried the torch almost ever since.

The 411: Click here for more info on the Memorial Day parade and festivities, and here for more info on the Carnival.

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

The two-year-old Sweetwater Music Hall has long since matured into a venue capable of booking a diverse array of top-notch performers, including an incredible run of late that has featured the likes of Patterson Hood, Michael Franti, The Headhunters, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Bombino and Taj Mahal.

But in case you needed another reminder, Bay Area jazz greats Charlie Hunter and Scott Amendola led a packed house on a scintillating journey Wednesday night. Hunter can play basslines, rhythm guitar and solos on a custom-made, seven-string guitar, while Amendola is the seemingly perfect complement on drums, adapting to each of Hunter’s improvisational jaunts and inciting his own.

The pair has released four 5-track EPs, one each focusing on the music of Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, the Cars and Hank Williams, respectively. They dove into the catalogs of each of those artists Wednesday night, including a raucous version of the Cars’ “Let the Good Times Roll” that had the crowd eagerly flexing their vocal chops.

Hunter, as entertaining with his guitar faces as he is with his brilliant playing, also led the duo into covers of such divergent hits as Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By” and Tupac’s “California Love.” They also delighted the crowd with a rendition of Lorde’s “Royals,” arguably the most popular song in the world over the past eight months. Check out the snippet above.

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

 At 114 years old, Scout Hall could use a bit of a makeover.

And if the Rotary Club of Mill Valley is successful in its latest attempt to raise enough money to pay for the work – a “Raise the Roof” fundraiser at the Outdoor Art Club is set for June 13  – one of Mill Valley’s landmark buildings will get the love it needs.

“If all goes well, we hope to have a shovel in the ground in August or September,” said Sue Moxon, who has overseen the 8-year-old effort to raise the money needed to overhaul the building at 177 E. Blithedale Ave. Moxon sits on the board of nonprofit Mill Valley Scout Hall Inc., which owns Scout Hall.

The hall, which served as a saloon, a livery stable and a laundry drying shack in the early 1900s, is heavily used by a host of local groups beyond the scouts (and isn’t affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America), serving as the lone dedicated youth center in Southern Marin since 1919, Moxon said. It also housed the offices of the Mountain Play Association for many years before the organization that puts on the outdoor theater production on Mount Tam each year moved to San Rafael in late 2013.

The Raise the Roof event features dinner from Insalata’s in San Anselmo and a live auction with vacation rentals from Lake Tahoe to Ireland, a bevy of great wines and restaurant gift certificates.

The project initially had a $1.2 million target but has been scaled back a bit, Moxon said. The organization has scrapped a plan to open up the ceiling and install a skylight due to prohibitive costs and the structural work that would have resulted.

But the new iteration of the project still includes a massive amount of work, including a new roof, a remodel of the bathrooms to make them larger and ADA compliant, a remodel of the kitchen, new front and rear doors, new hardwood floors, ADA-compliant front and rear entrances, the installation of a wheelchair lift, new plumbing and electrical systems, new paint throughout and an alarm system.

The campaign has raised around $570,000 to date, mostly through more than 400 individual donations. It got a major boost when an anonymous donor awarded Scout Hall a $240,000 matching-funds grant and the fundraising effort was able to match it. In addition to the cash donations, they've received approximately $120,000 in in-kind donations, including a new roof cover from McLeran Roofing. 

For Moxon, the Scout Hall renovations can’t come soon enough. While the remains a hub of local activities, Scout Hall plays a vital role for local youth groups. And the American Red Cross has designated Scout Hall as an emergency shelter once the renovations are finished, a role it played during the disastrous fire on Mount Tam in July 1929.

“This place is a Mill Valley landmark, and we’re making a community-wide appeal to help us restore it,” Moxon said.

The 411: Click here for more info and to buy tickets to the Rotary Club of Mill Valley's “Raise the Roof” fundraiser at the Outdoor Art Club on June 13.

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

On a Thursday afternoon in downtown Mill Valley, a tiny office space was buzzing with the youthful energy of a startup.

Programmers sat at nearly a dozen computers in the 400-square-foot room, and one was working with Arduino, a micro-controller intended to make the application of interactive objects more accessible. In the corner of the room, a Makerbot Replicator, a 3D printer that can create a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model, was humming to life.

But this office tucked into the back of the building that houses the Balboa Café wasn’t a VC-funded startup spawning in the 94941 – the programmers were all of elementary school age, and they were all girls. They were immersed in a variety of games and programs like Code Combat that help them understand things like Javascript programming and develop problem-solving skills.

This is the Mill Valley Code Club, a relatively new project that technology industry veteran Douglas Tarr founded last fall to spread the love and the skills of computer programming to his kids and their friends. The Thursday afternoon session is girls-only, and the Club overall has since ballooned to 100 kids, and along with popular programs from fellow local outfit MV Gate and activities at the Middle School, coding programs for youth are downright surging in Mill Valley.

“It’s a new literacy to me,” Tarr says, noting that the Club is “absolutely not” about setting kids on a career path. “It’s important for every kid to be able to navigate around a computer and to get them to do what you want. These kids are trying to express themselves – coding helps them do that. They can be creative on the computer – and they can really learn math and science as well.”

Tarr has been in the technology business for 20 years, having worked for and consulted with the likes of Levi Strauss, JPMorganChase and Payscale, the latter of which is a compensation website he founded and served as the vice president of programming for more than a decade.

He and his wife J’Amy, a Mill Valley native and fashion and textile designer, moved back to Mill Valley two years ago after stints in both Seattle, New York City and San Francisco.

He began the Club out of his house with a couple kids, including his 9-year-old son and some of his son’s friends from his Mill Valley Soccer Club team. Tarr’s kids have been playing on computer for several years, both because they seemed interested and because of his own level of interest and the fact that they were so central to his work.

“I hadn’t intended to do this,” Tarr says. “Parents were asking me if there was anywhere to teach your kid to code. It just kind of evolved from there.”

The Club moved into 38 Miller Ave., Suite 9 in January, and just five months later, with 100 kids from first through ninth grade spending time at the Club, Tarr is already thinking he might need more space.

Tarr structures the Club as a monthly program – parents buy a certain number of hours in six-hour increments per month – and the kids have a variety of things to choose to do and work on when they show up. He strives to maintain a ratio of about 3 kids to each instructor each day, and currently has two full-time employees and a few part-time instructors.

“That’s very important to the program,” he says. “When you’re trying to teach something like coding, it’s very challenging at first. So we’ll be keeping that ratio very low.”

He estimates that of the approximately 100 kids coming to the Club, about 40 percent are middle school students, 40 percent are between third and fifth grade and the rest are first and second graders, with students coming from as far as Fairfax, Corte Madera, Tiburon and Sausalito.

Linda Moll, whose daughters Abby, a fifth grader, and Hailey, a third grader, both at Strawberry Point School, are weekly Code Club attendees, says she couldn’t be happier with the Club.

“The things they can do are mind-boggling,” she says. “When you look at what they’ve done – creating, problem-solving and thinking through the end results – what they want and how they’re going to get there, it’s amazing.”

Moll sits on the board of the Strawberry Point PTA, and is involved regularly in conversations about technology as part of the curriculum.

“For me, this was a no brainer,” she says. “It’s not inexpensive, but this is money well spent.”

Mill Valley School District Superintendent Paul Johnson says he fully supports coding activities for students. MV Gate, which was founded by Mill Valley residents John Pearce and Jeff Leane, held an “Hour of Code” night last December at Old Mill School, drawing more than 200 students, Johnson said. The event was part of a global Hour of Code campaign, introduced by Code.org, a group backed by the tech industry that offers free curriculums. The campaign featured videos by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and President Obama - who urged kids, "Don't just buy a new video game, make one. Don't just download the latest app, help design it."

MV Gate also hosts CodeKids, after-school programs held at three of the district’s five elementary schools.

“It is an activity that prepares students for the 21st Century technological world we live in,” says Johnson, who notes that sixth graders at the Middle School have been working with Scratch. “Most importantly, students that participate are highly motivated and engaged in learning.  These after-school activities that have been popular with students and families, and we’re appreciative of their efforts and feel this has benefited many district students and families.”

The New York Times reported that since December, 20,000 teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade have introduced coding lessons, according to Code.org. In addition, some 30 school districts, including New York City and Chicago, have agreed to add coding classes in the fall, mainly in high schools but in lower grades, too.

The surge in coding instruction for kids is “unprecedented — there’s never been a move this fast in education,” Elliot Soloway, a professor of education and computer science at the University of Michigan, told the Times. 

Tarr agrees.

“I had no idea the Club would be as popular as it’s been,” he says. “There’s much more demand than there is supply. We’re creating a really exciting space for kids, where they can come and be excited and be exposed to all these different things – and it couldn’t be more relevant than it is today.” 

The 411: The Mill Valley Code Club is at 38 Miller Ave., Suite 9. 

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

Calling all fans of baseball, poetry, and anyone who enjoys some good old wordplay and repartee: the Mill Valley Public Library is hosting the Third Annual Poetry World Series, a poetry event unlike any other, after hours on on Friday, May 16.

The Poetry World Series turns the format and feel of standard poetry readings on its head, combining the lively, spontaneous energy of a poetry slam with written poetry that’s had the benefit of invested time and revision. So how does it work?

With the Library's Main Reading Room serving as the stadium, two teams of Bay Area poets will take turns “batting up” to a poem topic “pitched” to them. Emcee Will Durst, the satirist and nationally acclaimed syndicated columnist, will do the pitching, while a panel of judges, including Mill Valley resident Brian Murphy of KNBR’s “Murph & Mac” show and poets Dean Rader and Melissa Stein, will score each “batter’s” reading. The two competing teams have some heavy contenders: poets Heather Altfeld, Rebecca Foust, Amy Glynn, Judy Halebsky, Troy Jollimore, and Robert Thomas, with Roy Mash of the Marin Poetry Center serving as timekeeper and first player alternate. These talented poets have racked up plenty of accolades and experience (see bios below), but which of them will hit home runs?

The brainchild of Marin poet Rebecca Foust, the Poetry World Series is an event that serious fans of literature, serious fans of baseball, and serious fans of whimsy and excitement in any form will all enjoy.

The 411: The Third Annual Poetry World Series is Friday, May 16 from 7 to 9 pm in the Mill Valley Public Library's Main Reading Room. Pre-game refreshments, including popcorn, beer, and wine, will be available for pre-registered guests starting at 6:30 pm. The event is free and is open to adults and high school students only. Space is limited, so registration is recommended. Click here for more info on the participants or to register, or call 415-389-4292, x3.

Three-year-old event has featured films from surfing storytellers like Taylor Steele, Chris Malloy and Garrett McNamara with musical performances from Mason Jennings and Rogue Wave. 

Less than two years after it debuted at the Sweetwater Music Hall with five films in one day, the Mill Valley Surf Film Festival has a new name and an ever-expanding array of films and musical talent to showcase – across three days.

The newly named Highline Festival of Surfing is set for Sept. 5-7 at the Sweetwater, giving surfers and those that love the surfing culture a chance to celebrate the surfing lifestyle through film, music and art. The lineup will include 20 films, including multiple world premieres, three incredible evening concerts, surf photography and art exhibits with film directors, professional surfers, artists, photographers and world-renowned musicians on hand.

The festival was started in 2012 by Mill Valley resident Ari Lurie, a San Francisco native who is the founder of Eastern Horizons, a nonprofit after-school tutoring program for at-risk Marin City children. It has grown with the sponsorship help of local businesses like Proof Lab and Equator Coffee & Teas.

In its first two years, the festival featured films from great surfing storytellers like Taylor Steele, Chris Malloy and Garrett McNamara with musical performances from the Mermen, Mason Jennings and Rogue Wave. 

"The Highline Festival of Surfing celebrates surfing through various mediums," Lurie said. "This event is growing into a beacon of what's happening in surf culture, and we see its momentum continuing to reach the surf community across the country in the near future."

The 411: Click here for more info on the festival’s website or its Facebook page.

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