Hearts have been heavy at the Mill Valley Chamber in recent weeks, as Lucy, the sweet, unassuming-yet-inimitable four-legged canine sidekick of her owner, Chamber staffer Susan Lopes, passed away on May 8. Lucy was 14.

Visitors to the Mill Valley Chamber office and Visitor Center in recent years could be forgiven for not knowing Lucy very well, as she spent much of her days at the 85 Throckmorton Ave. tucked behind the desk catching up on her beauty sleep.

"We’d arrive at 10am, and Lucy would sleep in her bed until precisely 4pm, the end of the work shift, and be ready to go, always trying her best to steer me to Wells Fargo or Two Neat for treats," Lopes says. It was also on those walks to the car that Lucy, knowing that going to the bathroom would often result in said treats, would  "try to trick us by doing air pees."

But the memories of recent years only hinted at the hilariously feisty side of Lucy in her youth. "She won every war," Lopes says. "She would stare down every dog, making a little annoying noise and win whatever she wanted – a toy, a bone, a bed – every single time. She had tons of patience and was tenacious."

Lucy, who often held her bone in her mouth like a cigar, was also known to hang out with the big dogs, often refusing to acknowledge the existence of dogs her own size in favor of big dogs, like her big brother Luke, a yellow lab.

Lopes and family, friends and colleagues have years of great memories of Lucy, and we encourage you to leave yours in the comments below. We miss you Lucy!

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Four Tam High students have garnered scholarships through the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival committee's Emerging Artists Scholarship Fund, which was created in 2010 to offer awards every year to two seniors and two juniors who excel in the arts. The seniors are awarded $500 and the juniors are awarded $250. Unlike most scholarships that go directly to the institution, the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival awards are given directly to the student to be used for tuition and art supplies.

The seniors are awarded the money at the Seniors Award Night  and the juniors get their checks at the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival during the Saturday evening celebration for the participating artists. The festival is set for September 15-16 from 10am to 5pm in Old Mill Park. MORE INFO.

Here are the statements of the winners:

Marley Constantine, junior:
"Art has always been a big part of my life. Ever since I was young I have loved making art and art has been central in my school experience. I went to a small art-based school growing up and have taken art at Tamalpais High all three years. My favorite materials to work with are graphite and pastel but I also really like painting with acrylics. I am currently focusing on drawing people. We have so many expressions and postures through which we can convey emotion and I think we are fascinating to draw and paint. My concentration this year is on people and I chose my materials and colors to coordinate with the personality I am trying to bring through."

Maren Curtis, junior:
"I have been drawing since I was a very young and have a passion for drawing women. Most of my pieces are self portraits drawn with pen. I love designing clothes, so most of my girls are wearing detailed garments."

Dean Weiler, senior:
"Many of my pieces center around gender and transitioning from female to male. The human body is a big center of focus in art, and trans bodies are a large focus for many people as well. Splicing the two together and normalizing a body out of the binary. Art has helped me throughout my whole life, with my depression and troubling family issues. I came out as transgender just before my freshman year of high school, and art has helped me work through emotions and issues I deal with. Art has helped me have a voice for things words could not convey."

Taylor Kibrick, senior:
"I’m a student in the Tamalpais High School AP Art department and primary specialize in block print and pen-based art however I love to experiment with watercolor,  acrylic, and dry point. Within my art, I focus almost exclusively on line quality, especially when it comes to my block prints. Block printing exclusively captures such an intensity that no other medium can recreate that I use to my advantage to make a final piece really pop. I do this by offering the viewer simplistic geometric shapes as a backdrop, easy to attain and experience, to contrast the usually complicated subjects. In my work I aim to not only capture the beauty of nature but to portray it’s obscure and, at times, grotesque features as well. I try to bring my understanding of nature’s allure and savagery to all my art, especially in my current concentration on birds. I do this by showing the proof of processes and allowing simple physics to take control of either paint or ink."

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In 1998, Lily Kanter and her husband Marc Sarosi moved from Los Angeles to the Bay Area after Kanter got a transfer in her role at Microsoft.

Their search for an adopted hometown was brief.

“We had three dogs, and we drove into Mill Valley and it seemed like every other car we saw had a dog sitting shotgun,” Kanter says. “We just knew this was the place for us. It’s just the most idyllic town in America. It doesn’t get any better than being a country mouse living 10 minutes from one of the greatest cities in the world.”

​Twenty years later, Kanter and her family remain deeply rooted in Mill Valley, so much so that she’s doubling down on her engagement here. Her much-lauded career spans 17 years in accounting and technology at places like Deloitte & Touche and Microsoft, the creation of the former Mill Valley Baby & Kids Co. and co-founding of the renowned home design brand Serena & Lily brand with artist Serena Dugan, which now has nine stores in the U.S.

But having handed off Serena & Lily CEO duties to Lori Greeley in 2016, Kanter is onto the next big thing – one with a philanthropic twist.

Just two weeks ago, dozens of friends, family and industry colleagues gathered at 7 Locust Ave., the space formerly occupied by Nadine Curtis’ 7 on Locust retail shop, for an opening party of sorts for Boon Supply, Kanter’s latest venture.

Boon Supply draws on Kanter’s vast experience in building a consumer retail brand, selling an ever-growing array of 200-plus products, from reusable totes and kitchen products to garden tools and storage and organizational items, all organized around design, color, and pattern.

But while all that may sound like an eclectic-yet-familiar online retail shop, the business model takes a decisive left turn, splicing retail with the democratization of crowdfunding on sites like GoFundMe, IndieGogo and Kickstarter. On every item the company sells, 50 percent of the proceeds go towards the cause of the customer’s choice, including organizations like Kiddo!, the Mill Valley Schools Community Foundation that supports music, art, dance, technology, physical education and much more in all six Mill Valley School District schools. Organizations can also create their own fundraising campaigns on the site – just like they do on sites like GoFundMe.

“In many ways, Boon Supply is a combination of everything I've been doing and passionate about for the past 30 years,” says Kanter, a Kansas City, Missouri native who got deeply involved in supporting nonprofit organizations after leaving Microsoft. She was featured in Time magazine's July 2000 cover story, “The New Philanthropists.”

The lion’s share of the products on the site today are the result of Kanter’s acquisition of Mixed Bag Designs, a Burlingame-based school fundraising business co-founded by a friend of hers and which gave back 50 percent of purchases to schools. Kanter has already added some products to that mix, including an herb garden kit from the Living Seed Co. in Point Reyes.

“We’re building out a wide variety of products at price points under $25 as well as more premium offerings,” Kanter says. “And we’re completely innovating for our fall/holiday gift collection.”

At a Henry Crown Fellowship Program at the Aspen Institute, Kanter met Tamsin Smith, the founding president of (RED), the brand founded by U2 frontman Bono and Bobby Shriver to allow major brands like Apple, Starbucks and Nike to create products, with up to 50 percent of profits donated to the Global Fund, which supports large-scale prevention, treatment and care programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The two hit it off, and Smith agreed to join Boon Supply as its chief philanthropy officer. “For (RED), it was all about the Global Fund, and in our case we want to build a cause funding shopping platform where the cause is anyone’s choice,” Kanter says.
​
In addition to Kiddo!, Boon Supply is supporting a number of local organizations, including schools and private school foundations all over Marin, including the Tam High Foundation, the Drake Fund, Kentfield’s kik, as well as Bridge to Gap College Prep, which provides programming aimed at preparing Marin City students for college success. They’re also working with much larger organizations like Every Mother Counts, which focuses on maternal healthcare and was founded by model Christy Turlington Burns.

Much of the last year was “landing the plane, so to speak, with the existing company,” she says. That process culminated with the launch party at the Locust Ave. space, which will serve as the company’s headquarters for its marketing and merchandising teams until they outgrow it. It’s also a gorgeous showroom for their products, which are displayed on minimalist shelves with plenty of white surroundings to accentuate the colorful designs. Kanter says she’s offering 7 Locust as a community event space for schools and other local organization to host events.

On June 4, Boon Supply is opening a two-months pop-up showroom at the Mill Valley Lumber Yard, bringing yet another exciting brand to the recently revitalized historic property.

“We have already given back over $10 million since acquiring the existing school fundraising business less than a year ago,” she says, noting that they’re on track to generate $26 million in revenue in this year.

But while those numbers are eye-popping for such a young business, Kanter is, not surprisingly for someone with her track record, thinking much bigger.
​
“I truly believe wholeheartedly that this can be a billion-dollar-a-year give back company,” she says. “It will take us a little time to get there, but we see this becoming a really successful micro-fundraising site. Some of those sites like GoFundMe are $2 billion platforms. We feel there is an opportunity to have a radically exciting giveback platform.”

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From the Kiddo Carnival and the Pancake Breakfast to the Lytton Square Memorial Ceremony, Memorial Day Parade and Kiddo Celebration, May 28th was a day for the ages in Mill Valley.

And here's Mill Valley filmmaker Gary Yost's short film about Greenwood School's latest incredible entry in the parade:

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NOTE: Due to a scheduling conflict, the screening will occur in Old Mill Park, not Friends Field.

The bigger, better-than-ever-yet-still-free 2018 Movies in the Park series kicks off on Friday, June 8 with a 40th anniversary screening of Grease, the most successful movie musical of all time.

The film, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John as late 1950s-era high school seniors and bad boy and good girl, respectively, in 1959. Their summertime love gets complicated when Travolta's greaser Danny Zuko and Australian Sandy Olsson discover that they both now attend Rydell High and travel in very different crowds.

All Movies in the Park screenings occur in the redwood grove at Old Mill Park. Seating is general admission, and attendees are encouraged to bring a blanket and/or low beach chair. The main feature begins at sunset.

After a successful fundraising campaign to raise enough money to purchase all of the equipment required to produce the series on their own – propelled by a $5,000 grant from the Outdoor Art Club – Mill Valley Recreation, the Mill Valley Chamber and the California Film Institute have expanded the series in 2018, now stretching it  across five screenings from June through October.

The rest of the 2018 Movies in the Park lineup includes Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the latest of yet another hugely successful film in the continuing Star Wars saga, on July 6; The Incredibles, the 2004 Pixar film about a family of undercover superheroes that has a sequel coming out this summer, on August 3; a July 6th screening of The Lion King, the massive 1994 hit that will be followed up in 2019 with a live action version starring Beyonce and Donald Glover; and 2016's Zootopia, which will screen on Oct. 5 during the opening weekend of the 41st Mill Valley Film Festival.
​
MORE INFO.

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Mill Valley has a bounty of incredible artists. With that in mind, as we designed the 2018 Enjoy Mill Valley Summer/Fall Guide, our all things-Mill-Valley mini-magazine that went out to 38,000 households within the June issue of Marin Magazine, we turned over the cover to them. We were quickly reminded of the artistic talent that exists here in Marin. Among the plethora of great designs we received was from local resident native Janet Rumsey, a graphic designer and nature lover born in Mill Valley.

Our jury of artists loved Rumsey’s quirky, nature-loving, summer-centric design (at left) of her peering out at the world. We hope you do as well. Rumsey says she often takes photos from that vantage point “because you see what’s behind you and where you are but it’s not just the whole selfie thing. I enjoy creating images of people with growing minds – lots of flowers coming out of their heads. Grow your mind and go into nature.”

​This Summer Guide – available digitally here and in hard copies within Marin Magazine, at the Mill Valley Visitor Center at 85 Throckomorton and at business and community hubs all over town – is all about the thrills that lie ahead in Mill Valley. We took a look at the incredible new dawn at the revitalized Mill Valley Lumber Yard, tracked down some Summer Must Haves, whether you’re staying in town or traveling, and our blockbuster Events Calendar, which kicks off on page 20 in the Summer Guide and lives in its entirety below, looks at the incredible lineup of great events to come, from concerts and festivals to the bigger and better-than-ever free Movies in the Park series. Thanks to the amazing Susan Lopes and all of the sponsors and advertisers who helped us make this Summer Guide happen. Lastly, we want to hear from you – send your thoughts, ideas and pithy asides to info@millvalley.org.  –Jim Welte

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Longtime Mill Valley artist Shane Kennedy calls his newest series of mixed media work "Collages," which for him refers to works of art made by grouping found or unrelated objects.

While that term makes sense to even the least artistically inclined among us, exactly how Kennedy creates those pieces is another story. “Working quickly and without a plan,” Kennedy says with a laugh in explaining his process. "I look for moments to start and stop and capture the unexpected.”

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, showcases his latest work throughout June at the Mill Valley Chamber (85 Throckmorton, with a wine reception on June 5 (5:30-7:30pm) 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, Julie Zener Gallery, the Mill Valley Public Library, Terrestra, Dolls & Dandy, the Depot Bookstore & Café, City Hall, Famous4, the Mill Valley Community Center and the Throckmorton Theatre, among others. Receptions at each venue are Tuesday from 5:30-7:30m. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.

Kennedy has lived in Mill Valley for 30 years, 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. 

The 411: Shane Kennedy exhibits his artwork at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center, 85 Throckmorton Avenue, throughout January. The First Tuesday Artwalk receptions are Tuesday, June 5, 5:30-7:30pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.

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Bungalow 44 restaurant, which closed temporarily on April 15 to accommodate “an exciting facelift" that included fresh new paint, new table tops, new chair, new art and a revitalized, farmer's market-driven menu, has reopened.

"We're BAACK!" owners Peter Schumacher and Bill Higgins announced in an email to customers and on Facebook. "
Come check out Bungalow 2.0. The tables are set. The wine glasses are more than half full. The olives are ready to take
the martini plunge. And the new menu? Don't even get us started. Your new/old Bungalow 44 is now open. We've missed you. Get in here...and yes, we still (and always will) serve Kickin' Fried Chicken..." 

Before embarking on the remodel, Schumacher said of the restaurant that opened at 44 East Blithedale Avenue in 2003: “After 15 years, it’s just like you would do for your house – and our restaurant is a home away from home for many people in downtown Mill Valley – we’re going to make it a little bit cleaner, brighter and a little bit sexier." 

New chef Gabe Charpentier, most recently the chef de cuisine at the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, will be leading the kitchen on a menu that will be “hyper-seasonal and vegetable-focused,” including “lighter and more imaginative offerings," without losing some of the old favorites like Kickin’ Fried Chicken, Hamachi Poppers and burgers. Here's the Summer 2018 menu.

The 411: Bungalow 44 has reopened after closing in April for a renovation. MORE INFO.

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Pacific Discovery School, the new, private TK-8 school founded and headed by Wendy Xa opening in the fall in the Mill Valley School District space at 70 Lomita Drive, hosts a pair of Information Sessions on Thursday, May 31.

The sessions, set for 9am and 6:30pm, will feature a presentation, Q&A and tours of the school, which has been the home of the private Ring Mountain Day School for the past 14 years in the building adjacent to the campus of Edna Maguire Elementary School.

As Xa and her team move towards building a new school at the location, they're promoting a curriculum that embraces small class sizes, project-based learning, band scheduling, an on-site learning specialist, homeschooler support, outdoor education and collaborative learning.

Xa, a former vice president at Goldman Sachs and a mother of two who founded the Mandarin immersion Presidio Knolls School in San Francisco in 2008 as a preschool before expanding it to a K-8 program, and her team say they've already accepted the school's first batch of applicants with rolling admissions continuing.

Pacific Discovery is taking over Ring Mountain’s lease with the district, an agreement that runs through 2024. With the success of Presidio Knolls behind it, Xa’s Pacific Discovery School hopes to step into that void with “a focus on embracing and empowering the individual child to feel confident in who he is versus what others think he should be,” says Christina Forté, the school’s community outreach director. “That’s really the foundation on which this school has been built. Creating, self-aware, happy, empathetic and confident kids…that’s going to be the school’s measure of success.”

Xa feels the school building at 70 Lomita lends itself well to the outdoor education component, particularly its proximity to places like Muir Woods and Mount Tam. “Learning differences will also be embraced – there will be real support,” says Christina Forté, the school’s community outreach director, noting that Pacific Discovery will have a learning specialist on site.

Forté says the school is recruiting students from Novato to San Francisco and plans to run a bus from San Francisco to accommodate those students.

She notes that “there were many things that were happening at Ring Mountain that were pretty special, and we’ll be retaining some of those things.” That includes the Harkness table, a teaching method by which students sit at a table to discuss ideas in an encouraging, open-minded environment with minimal teacher intervention.

“It’s an amazing to watch these kids engage in a richer and more robust discussion in which everyone feels heard and there’s a confidence level in every kid,” she says.

Xa and her team plan to renovate parts of the Ring Mountain building, including the front facade, Forté says. They’ll take over the building in June.

The 411: Pacific Discovery School holds a pair of Information Sessions on Thursday, May 31, at 9am and 6:30pm. 70 Lomita Drive. RSVP for 9am session here. RSVP for 6:30pm session here. MORE INFO.

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In this age of selfies and the dreaded selfie sticks, how do we dig deeper? Does anybody know you as well as you know yourself?  

O'Hanlon Center for the Arts seeks to answer these questions and more with its June 2018 exhibit.

Dubbed “Who Am I?,” the exhibit features the work of artists representing themselves in "unique self-portraits," from traditional self-portrait to abstract representations of self views, giving a glimpse of how artist view themselves – see artist Dan Cassidy's "self portrait" at left. 

O'Hanlon co-director Erma Murphy says "contemporary, expressionistic, abstract, exploratory, and/or experimental works will be featured."

The exhibit, juried by Joe Brubaker, runs May 31-June 23 at O'Hanlon, 616 Throckmorton Ave.

"O’Hanlon Center for the Arts emphasizes the creative process and the continued pursuit of meaning and authenticity through observation, exploration, and experimentation," Murphy adds.

The 411: O'Hanlon Center for the Arts' June 2018 exhibit, “Who Am I?," runs May 31 to June 23, with a First Tuesday Artwalk reception on Tuesday, June 5, 5:30-7:30pm. 616 Throckmorton Ave. Free.

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As any good yarn should, the story of the rebirth of the historic Mill Valley Lumber Yard began with a hankering for a bag of popcorn.

​Matt Mathews went to Tamalpais Paint & Color on Miller Ave. on a Friday morning in 2012 to grab some paint for one of his family’s buildings in San Francisco’s SoMa district. Since he was in the area, he swung by the then-Mill Valley Lumber Co. at 129 Miller Ave. to see if they had any good deals on tools – but mostly to grab a bag of the shop’s free, delicious popcorn.

As he waited in line, Mathews heard co-owner Dan Cerri tell a customer that they were unable to sell the hardware business and had put the historic, nearly one-acre up for sale as developable land. Mathews shuddered.

“Couldn’t imagine those buildings being torn down,” he says of the property lumber magnate Robert Dollar built in 1892.

“It couldn’t have been a quicker decision – we just jumped in,” adds his wife Jan Mathews.

​Flash forward six years. It’s midday on a Wednesday. The new Miller Valley Lumber Yard is absolutely abuzz with activity.

Heather Hardcastle and Rick Perko and hustling around to serve up their Flour Craft Bakery gluten-free treats and sandwiches to a plethora of customers. Molly de Vries, owner of Ambatalia, a shop that showcases “modern ecological textiles to support a non-disposable life,” is beaming.

​“It can’t get any better than this,” she says.

Gayle Nicoletti’s Bloomingayles, a floral design shop, is busier than it’s ever been since she opened it nearly five years ago in an old shipping container she shares with de Vries’ Ambatalia.

Stephen Gordon, who founded Restoration Hardware nearly 40 years ago, has the look of a man who’s seeing the payoff on a bet he placed in 2013. That’s when he made the Lumber Yard the home of the flagship store of his then-fledgling Guideboat Co., which is inspired by the classic wooden boats from upstate New York where he grew up.

Suzy Ekman and Heath Owen, owner and operations manager of the new Makers Market retail shop, are standing in the middle of the yard, almost in awe at that vibrancy they’re seeing on a weekday afternoon at a property that is months away from full fruition, with Ged Robertson’s new  Watershed eatery on the way later this year and a few other vacant spaces.

“This is incredible,” Ekman says.

One momentous decision in summer 2012 ignited it all.

​Since 1995, Matt and Jan Mathews, who met while working at real estate giant Grubb & Ellis in the mid-1980s, have run a family business that buys properties, leverages Matt’s background in construction and renovates them. They lease the properties out and manage each themselves, and had just finished an arduous renovation of a historic building in the City of Sonoma. They were ready to “just hit cruise control for a bit,” Mathews says.

But the prospect of losing those Lumber Co. buildings straddling the creek at 129 Miller gnawed at them, especially in the town where they’ve lived since 1990. They inquired, and found out bids were due in less than 72 hours. A frantic weekend ensued, and they placed their bid. And then they waited. And then came a counter offer, with a note that the Cerri family, which had owned the property for 14 years, appreciated their plan to keep the buildings.

​Needless to say, it was one of many “what exactly did we just do?” moments for the couple, who had two girls at college at the time and “plenty to keep us very busy for a long time,” says Jan Mathews, noting that their hopes to recruit a Bay Area hardware store tenant were met with disinterest.

Through a friend in Matt’s hometown of Eureka, they met Gordon, who was readying a new chapter with Guideboat. He’d briefly eyed the property himself but passed. The trio hit it off, inking a lease to open a flagship store at what became the Mill Valley Lumber Yard.

Nicoletti and de Vries followed soon after, and the Mathews dove into the planning process for the 42,500-square-foot site.

Given the historic nature of the project, the complications that come with renovating buildings that are more than 120 years old, the property’s proximity to dense residential neighborhoods and the then-impending 18-month Miller Avenue project, it was by far the most difficult project the couple had ever endured.

“It was complicated, integrating steel and wood while so close to the road,” Matt Mathews says.

​And in the midst of all of it, a massive health scare befell Matt Mathews, one that would take him a full year to fend off.

“It sure added to my motivation to get it done – I knew I didn’t want to leave it for Jan to deal with all by herself,” he says with a chuckle.

“That time really solidified our connections to the community,” Jan Mathews says. “There was so much support. It really helped us get through it.”

As the excitement builds, Matt and Jan Mathews are mindful of their journey.

“Having (Guideboat, Ambatalia and Bloomingayles) stick with us through all of this has been really great,” Jan Mathews says. “And everyone here embodies what we look for. They’re creators, innovators and authentic.”

That includes artists and small businesses renting the small offices at the Lumber Yard, from authors and artists to the equity crowdfunding site co-founded by legendary local musician Jerry Harrison. Most tenants walk or bike to work each day.

“They all feed off of each other,” Jan Mathews says.

​Nicoletti is still processing it all.

“I’m seeing people all of a sudden who I haven’t seen in years, and others who had no idea what was happening here,” she says. “It’s so exhilarating to meet people who are coming here for the first time and to see how excited they are to be here.”
“After all these years and hard work, Matt and Jan’s vision has come true, instantly, and the community has gravitated here,” adds de Vries. “It’s amazing.”

“There are few people who could have accomplished what Matt and Jan have done here,” Gordon says. “That’s a testament to their integrity and their respect for the property and respect for the neighbors and their community. They deserve every ounce of the kudos they’re getting for what they’ve done here.”

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Wide-ranging show to include nods to the magic of Mary Poppins, a tribute to the King of Pop Michael Jackson, and Hairspray.

Forty years ago next month, Cece Bechelli opened Happy Feet Dance School in the building that contains Marin Theatre Company on Miller Avenue. She moved it one year later to a 2,600-square-foot, bowling alley-shaped former auto repair garage on Montford Avenue right off of Miller. the school has been there ever since. 

To celebrate four decades of teaching kids and adults to an array of dance styles, Bechelli, her daughter and school co-director Caitlin and their team of dance instructors are hosting a "The Best of Forty Years in Dance!" recital on June 3, with a performances by the school's younger dancers at 12:30pm and older dancers at 4:30pm, with Happy Feet's high school performing company performing at both shows.

Set for the Marin Veterans' Memorial Auditorium, the recital will cover a ton of ground, with alumni, friends, and family invited to reminisce and enjoy some of the most cherished tap, jazz, and ballet suites in Happy Feet's forty-year history. Happy Feet's high school performing company will bring to life Happy Feet favorites like "The Magic of Mary Poppins," "A Tribute to the King of Pop – Michael Jackson and Hairspray.

"We are so blessed to have had the opportunity to teach so many wonderful students in this community," Cece Bechelli says. "It's especially rewarding to have so many children start with us as little toddlers and stay with us all the way until high school graduation. Not only do our students develop into well-trained beautiful dancers, but we get to know our students as confident young adults by the time they leave for college. We are so lucky!" 

Happy Feet has long been a family affair. Bechelli's three children, Matt, Caitlin, and Kelsey "basically grew up at Happy Feet," she says, all teaching dance in high school and college. And Caitlin Bechelli, who started dancing at the age of two at Happy Feet, taught there during high school and graduated from UCLA in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in World Arts and Cultures/ Dance, is the school's co-director. 

"Having Caitlin as my co-director is a huge blessing," Cece Bechelli says. "She brings a young, vibrant energy to Happy Feet and is a joy to work with everyday."

Sheri Bechelli, Cece's sister-in-law and friend from their childhood dance school in San Francisco, is one of Happy Feet's long-time instructors, while her daughter, Brea, grew up dancing at Happy Feet, taught dance during high school and is now headed to the University of Oregon, where she will major in dance.

The June 3rd performances serve as a culmination of four decades,

The 411: Happy Feet celebrates four decades of teaching kids and adults to dance with a The Best of Forty Years in Dance! recital on Sunday, June 3 at 12:30pm and 4:30pm at the Marin Veterans' Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael. TIX & MORE INFO.

Here's Cece and Caitlin Bechelli performing original choreography as a tribute to Duke Ellington and the Whitman Sisters:

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​The City of Mill Valley's 18-month, $18 million Miller Avenue Streetscape Project, a once-in-generation re-imagining of approximately two miles of one of Mill Valley’s two main arteries and far and away the biggest road improvement project the City had undertaken in decades, is in the rearview mirror.

But after what was a long slog for City officials, a major impact for businesses and an inconvenience for the community, Miller Avenue is a significantly more vibrant street and much safer for all of its users with continuous bike lanes, improved sidewalks, enhanced crosswalks, and new pavement, storm drains, sewer pipes and much more – all while retaining and even enhancing Miller Avenue’s distinct character.

With that in mind, and in the interest of using an increasingly vibrant, safer Miller Ave. to more deeply connect downtown and Miller-area shops and restaurants to both local residents and visitors, the Mill Val​ley Chamber sought to install a pair of wayfinding signs along the 3.8-mile Mill Valley-Sausalito Multiuse Path. With gracious support and coordination from the folks at Marin County Parks and the City of Mill Valley, two new signs direct both northbound and southbound path users from the three-year-old roundabout at Sycamore Ave. to "Miller Ave., Downtown Shops & Restaurants."

The Chamber chose the location based on the proximity to bike- and pedestrian-friendly Miller and Sycamore avenues, as well as the massive, year-round popularity of the path. Stretching from Mike’s Bikes in Sausalito north to East Blithedale Ave. in Mill Valley with views of Bothin Marsh Preserve and Richardson Bay in between, the path was built 35 years ago and a portion of it was resurfaced in 2017. Since its debut in 1981, it has become one of the most popular paths in the entire Bay Area, with more than a half-million people using it between March and November each year, according to annual WalkBikeMarin Path Counts.

The new signs are in addition to a wayfinding sign installed earlier this year, with gracious support and coordination by the City of Mill Valley, that further connects the downtown to the Miller corridor. That sign, pictured below, is located at Throckmorton Ave. and Bernard Street – outside Vasco restaurant. More wayfinding efforts are on the way.

SHOP, EAT, DRINK AND GATHER LOCALLY!!