Ever since the design-oriented businesses on and around Miller and Locust avenues launched the Mill Valley Design District in late 2015, the group's leaders have shown a penchant for throwing fantastic events and drawing the community to its eclectic mix of like-minded creative shops.

​They're at it again this Friday, June 10 (5-8pm), with a Summer Kickoff Block Party on Locust Ave. at Miller that promises an appropriately creative, fun-filled evening. The businesses on the north side of Locust – namely 7 on Locust, Elena Calabrese Design, Stick & Ball and Kress Jack at Home – will have oysters, beer pong and special prizes for attendees, while those on the street's south side – primarily Poet and/the Bench and Salvage – will be serving up rosé and donut holes and even more special prizes.

Don't miss this chance to kick off the summer with some of the most creative people in Mill Valley!

If you love birthdays and artisanal pizza, head to Strawberry Village on Saturday for delicious dose of each.

Pizza Antica, one of the shopping center's anchor restaurants, celebrates its 10th birthday on Saturday, June 11, with an all-day prosecco toast, and customers "who wish us a happy birthday" will receive a  when you a complimentary glass of bubbles.

Pizza Antica officials says that anyone who wishes the restaurant a happy birthday by posting a photo on Instagram (@pizzaantica, #happybirthdaypizzaantica) will be entered to win a $50 gift card. 

Pizza Antica, created by Tim Standard and Mill Valley resident Gordon Drysale as a place for artisanal pizza in a kid-friendly environment, is part of the Bacchus Management Group, which also owns and oversees Spruce in San Francisco, and The Village Pub in Woodside. Pizza Antica also has locations in Lafayette, San Jose's Santana Row and Santa Monica.

Dear Mayor McCauley, City Manager McCann and members of the Mill Valley City Council,
​
The news yesterday of yet another delay/postponement in the due process rights of the applicants in the Mill Valley Lumber Yard project could not go unanswered, or unshared with other caring, tax paying citizens of our town.

I would say that another 11th hour notice of further delay is shocking, if it were not just one more roadblock hastily thrown up by the Mill Valley Planning staff and the Planning Commission, with the apparent complicity of the City Council and City Administration, on the path of this landmark project.

In my capacity as the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Edible Marin & Wine Country magazine, I travel widely throughout Marin, Napa and Sonoma counties. Just last week I was in Healdsburg and Yountville, as well as San Anselmo. Each one of those small towns is absolutely abuzz, thriving, full of commerce and social activity. Tourists and locals, all out and about, creating community and supporting local businesses.

This was also the case with our town not so long ago. My family and I moved here 11 years ago for this exact reason.  We paid dearly to do so, but it was worth it. We continue to pay frankly outrageous property taxes to remain here.  The ability to walk our son to school, and to walk downtown to meet friends on the Plaza, shop and dine was one of our main reasons for choosing Mill Valley.

I was struck as I drove back into Mill Valley last week after the day in Yountville with how many empty storefronts STILL exist downtown. This has been a lingering heartache for a while, but with the recent closing of yet another longtime business on Throckmorton Avenue, it has reached a crisis point. 

I ran into a fellow resident and local business owner outside the Mill Valley Market that evening, and she shared the same sentiments. Another longtime resident with the same dismay and frustration the following day. There is a rising ground swell of despair. 

Last Thursday I met with the organizers of the Mill Valley Film Festival, and we discussed the shame that it will be when our town hosts the world-class festival again this year, “showcasing” so many empty storefronts - again.

Surely enough is enough. 

When the Marin IJ published an article on the Mill Valley Lumber Yard project earlier this spring, noting that the owners, Mill Valley residents Matt and Jan Mathews, had opened the once private property to community gatherings, and planned to do more, someone commented on line that Mill Valley was ‘not a community that gathered together.’ I responded, disputing that. We ARE a community that gathers together, or we were… But, little by little, the community spirit is being eroded. 

Please, please do not let a very vocal small handful of people, and certain members of the Planning Commission, derail this unique opportunity to craft a thriving addition to our town. One that by all accounts meets and exceeds the goals of the Mill Valley 2040 General Plan that was thoroughly vetted in public hearings. Have all of you actually visited this site? This project has been before the Planning Commission for over three years now. The tail has been wagging the dog for far too long. The rest of us are your constituents, too – residents and business owners. Questions have been asked and answered. Extensive and expensive studies done, and done again - by experts recommended by the City Staff itself. 

THEY ARE NOT CHANGING THE FOOTPRINT OF THESE HISTORICAL BUILDINGS – UNTIL VERY RECENTLY A BUSY, DIRTY, LOUD LUMBERYARD.  

This is now the widespread and often cited reputation of our town - it is too difficult to get through planning to do business here. We are withering as a result. Property values are being diminished, along with quality of everyday life.  

It is time for our ELECTED representatives to step up and do the right thing. Or, be on record as complicit in the Mathews’ abandoning of this four-year project due to continued unreasonable delays, unclear directives from Staff, moving of goal posts, and exorbitant and unnecessary expenses. 

That day could be approaching, and I do not believe that the residents of this town will be silent when a new developer steps in, with plans to convert what could have been a landmark gateway to our town into multi-family housing (potentially high density), or reverted back to an industrial site, both of which the property is currently zoned for - or worse. 

I urge you to set a finite date for a proper and fair final hearing, and direct your Planning Staff to devote the attention this project needs and deserves, and, perhaps, even take the time to meet with the applicants yourselves to resolve the VERY few remaining issues – namely, parking. Let’s get this town back on the right track – thriving businesses attract more thriving business, and happy citizens (aka taxpayers).

Respectfully yours,
​
Gibson Thomas

More than a decade ago, while working as a consultant on HBO's Sex and the City, comedian Greg Behrendt made an off-handed comment that changed his career.
​
The 45-year-old comedian, who grew up in Ross, was having lunch with a female co-worker on the show who asked him why a guy she went on a date with followed up with a terse email two days later. His pointed reply, "He's just not that into you," became an outright phenomenon, turning Behrendt from a workhorse standup comic into something of a relationship guru.

He and "Sex and the City" colleague Liz Tucillo published their tough-love tome, "He's Just Not That Into You" in 2004, and a star-studded, Hollywood feature film in 2009 based on the book brought in nearly $180 million at the box office. Behrendt has continued to publish, has hosted his own couples reality show and daytime talk show and continues to hit the road on the standup comedy circuit.

Behrendt is headlining the 2016 Comedy in the Plaza event, the Mill Valley Arts Commission’s annual night of hilarity on the Plaza, which regularly draws some of the best standup comedians around. Joining Behrendt are Conan writer and Last Coming Standing Season 7 finalist Laurie Kilmartin and San Francisco comic Natasha Muse. KGO radio host Brian Copeland serves as MC.

The 411: Comedy in the Plaza is June 15. Depot Plaza. 6:30pm. Free.

As a young girl, artist Diana Liu Benet regularly watched her father, an internationally renowned watercolorist, paint. And as she followed in her father's artistic footsteps, she realized that "despite all the beauty of his brush stroke, the bold use of color (his trademark), the gesture or implied motion, there was no shadow," Benet says.

Like many children who follow in their parent's footsteps but seek to add their own perspective, Benet took a different tack in her painting and mixed media work.

"It’s always been about light and shadow," she says. "The quality of light; the clarity or translucence, the hue or the lack of color, and what it allows one to see or disallows the same, has captivated my attention since childhood. With that, the interplay of shadow is light’s compliment. Whether the shadow is dense or slight, hard edged or soft, reflective of color, draws me into the setting. This is how I see the dance of the subject, a certain rapport between the light and the shadow. Do they make magic together or just complete the steps?

Benet is exhibiting her artwork at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center (85 Throckmorton) throughout June with a wine reception on June 7 (6–8pm) as part of the Mill Valley Arts Commission's First Tuesday Artwalk. The monthly celebration of local art includes a host of venues, including the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Seager Gray Gallery, the Mill Valley Public Library, Dolls and Dandy Salon, Terrestra, the Depot Bookstore & Café and City Hall. Receptions at each venue are Tuesday from 6–8pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.

Benet says her Chinese background has imbued her with the value of composition and the definitive character of stroke, while Western training allows her to explore her world in oil, egg tempera, mixed media, charcoal & ink.

"My progression into painting hopefully has carried with it that same sense of light and the affect it has on our world," she says.

The 411: Diana Liu Benet exhibits her "Remembrance" paintings at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center, 85 Throckmorton Avenue, throughout May. The First Tuesday Artwalk receptions are Tuesday, May 3, 6–8pm. First Tuesday Artwalk Guide with venues and a map.

Good Earth Natural Food is hosting a Grand Opening celebration of its Tam Valley store, featuring special demos with local producers, in-store raffles, samples, live music from Tom Finch & EJ and the lovers, wellness samples and kids activities, including face painting, flag painting. Proof Lab will be there with a mini skate board ramp for all the kids (or adults) who want to take a ride.

​The store officially opened its doors in March, thrilling a community that has seen its biggest building sit vacant since December 2010, when DeLano's IGA Market closed the week as part of a series of closures for the grocery chain.

The event, set for Saturday, June 18, 11am-5pm at 201 Flamingo Road, will also feature samples and information from: Earl's Organic Produce, Full Belly Farm, FirstNutrients - Nutrivie plant-based formulas, WishGarden Herbs, Solgar Vitamin and Herb, MoonEssence, Flour Craft Bakery, Sacred Chocolate, Donna's Tamales, Alive & Healing, Plenty Pops, Late July Organic Snacks, Living Intentions RAW Snacks, Straus Family Creamery, Bozzano Olive Ranch, Lydia's Organics, Revive Kombucha, Urban Remedy, Green Girl Bakeshop, Acure Organics, SmartChicken, Organicgirl Produce, Himalaya Herbals, Palio Coffee, Patagonia Provisions, Navitas Naturals, Essential Oxygen, Amazing Grass, CloverStornetta, Miyoko's Kitchen, Wild West Ferments, Skyhill Napa Valley Farms, Stemple Creek Ranch, Nicasio Valley Cheese Company, Himalaya Herbal Healthcare USA, Nutiva, and Fort Point Beer Company.

In the years that Jaylana Zemansky, Amanda Davis and Paige Charbonnier worked together at Magnolia Avenue Salon in downtown Larkspur, they morphed from colleagues to friends to partners.

“Friends turned into family, basically,” Zemansky says. “We all wanted to see each other grow and succeed, and together we developed a vision of what we wanted to create for ourselves.”

The trio realized that vision this week, opening AP Luxe Salon at 40 Millwood Street near downtown Mill Valley. They did so with a tagline that says it all: “Self-indulgence is the ultimate form of luxury, and luxury lives at AP LUXE.”

“We wanted a brand that was known for luxury,” says Zemansky, who serves as the salon’s chief operating officer and notes that Davis and Charbonnier are among the very few Certified L'Oreal Professionnel Balayage Artists in Northern California. “That’s a huge accomplishment – and they’re right here in Mill Valley.”

AP Luxe Salon hosted a blockbuster pre-opening celebration on May 26, and opened their doors officially on June 1.

“Today was our first day,” Zemansky says. “I woke up this morning and couldn’t believe it was actually all happening. We’re thrilled.”

The 411: AP Luxe Salon is at 40 Millwood Street. It’s open Tue.-Sat. from 9am-6pm. You can book appointments online here or by calling 415.987.5893 (LUXE).

Do you like your wine, beer and gourmet food served with a side of some scintillating gypsy jazz? 

Find out at the 35th Annual Mill Valley Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting on June 5 in downtown Mill Valley, where three of the Bay Area's most talented purveyors of gypsy jazz will deliver a sneak preview of the 2016 edition of Djangofest, the 12-year-old event inspired by the late gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Djangofest, which attracts legions of fans of the “hot” jazz sound Reinhardt pioneered as well as guitarists from all over the Bay Area, is set for June 10-12 at the Throckmorton Theatre and has long been one of the landmark local venue’s most popular events.

In an effort to promote Djangofest, the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Throckmorton Theatre are teaming up again to bring gypsy jazz to the Depot Plaza on June 5. The Djangofest trio – guitarists Jimmy Grant and Javier Jimenez and bassist Simon Planting – will play from 1–2pm at the event. Grant fronts his own eponymous ensemble, while Jimenez, a founder and former member of the popular Marin-based group Beso Negro, leads his own group, Barrio Manouche.

Though Reinhardt died 63 years ago, gypsy jazz continues to find new audiences. Its popularity surged in the aftermath of Woody Allen’s 1999 filmSweet and Lowdown, in which Sean Penn portrayed 1930s, fictional jazz guitarist Emmet Ray, who idolizes Django Reinhardt. As proof that gypsy jazz’s resurgence continues, Grant says, comes in the form of the Selmer-Maccaferri and Selmer style guitars that Reinhardt favored.

“When I started playing 10 years ago, it was hard to find those guitars,” Grant says. “Now there era hundreds of people selling them.”

A Romani gypsy from Belgium, Reinhardt emerged in the 1930s as Europe’s best-known jazz musician, a virtuoso guitar player who combined his love for American greats like Louis Armstrong with the rich and mysterious Romani musical tradition. Though he died tragically young at age 43, Reinhardt’s musical legend was by that time cemented within jazz circles, and the past few decades have seen a worldwide spike in interest in both his music and his place in jazz history.

“He transformed jazz in a lot of ways,” says Nick Lehr, the co-founder of DjangoFest Mill Valley who produced his first such festival in Whidbey Island, Washington back in 2001. “Not only was he the most famous European jazz musician, but he’s also probably the only European that really contributed to the development of the art form.”

The idea for DjangoFest first struck Lehr at a similar event outside Paris, in the small town where Reinhardt lived as an adult and eventually died. Seeing the crowd’s enthusiasm for the music, Lehr thought it would be great to mount some kind of Django tribute event back home in the States.

Starting with Whidbey Island in the Northwest, Lehr has now produced editions of DjangoFest in multiple locations including Southern California, Colorado and the Bay Area.

And when Steve Jobs first introduced that most modern of devices – the iPad – to the world back in 2010, he did it to the sounds of “Swing Guitars,” one of Reinhart’s most recognizable tunes, recorded with violinist Stéphane Grappelli and the Quintette of the Hot Club of France back in the 1930s.

Local admirers of Reinhardt’s music and its contemporary incarnations will have a veritable feast of hot jazz -- both American and European -- to choose from at Djangofest, including Joscho Stephan, the world-renowned German guitarist who has been hailed as "the future of the Gypsy jazz tradition" by Acoustic Guitar Magazine. 

But Lehr is quick to point out that Reinhart’s music is for everyone, not just jazz-lovers.

“It’s not the kind of music you need a PhD to appreciate,” he says. “It’s toe-tapping, swinging music that’s very accessible to people of all ages.”

Planting, a native of Holland, moved to the Bay Area a decade ago, one year after he was performing with Djangofest regulars the Robin Nolan Trio at an in-store show at Amoeba Records on Haight Street in San Francisco. He met his future wife at that show.

Planting says he was thrilled by the existence of such a tight-knit community of lovers of gypsy jazz in the Bay Area, and he’s been deeply connected to it ever since.

Planting’s first recollection of hearing Reinhardt’s distinct sound is as a 5-year-old boy in his backyard garden in Holland, when his father played Django on a 78 wind-up gramophone on warm summer afternoons. “He loved playing a Django recording of “Honeysuckle Rose,” Planting says. “I was really drawn to the enormous amount of energy that came off of that guitar.”

In 1976, Planting started taking classical training on double bass from Hans van Meegen, a well-known Dutch bass player who played at the Noord-Hollands Philharmonisch Orkest in Haarlem, Netherlands. Three years later, Planting was introduced to Fapy Lafertin, a Dutch Roma gypsy guitar player and gifted Django interpreter. The two recorded two albums together and toured throughout Europe together.

“He’s really one of the direct links to Django,” says Planting, who lives in the East Bay. “Through him, I connected to so many people in the Django community in Europe. And now I know so many musicians in the gypsy jazz here in the United States.”
While Planting plays a wide range of music in a variety of bands, including the Cartoon Jazz Orchestra.
​
But gypsy jazz is Planting’s true love, and he says he’s excited to play with Grant and Jimenez. “They’re just fantastic players,” he says.

The 411: Djangofest is June 10-12 at the Throckmorton Theatre. Tickets are $45–$65. All Workshops are $45. Click here for the full schedule or to buy tickets.