When Dez and Liz Fiedler sold their hugely successful frozen yogurt business Loving Cup in 2018, their heads were swirling from the eventful journey that had preceded the sale.

Liz Fiedler had launched the business nearly a decade earlier. The couple grew it exponentially over subsequent years, so much so that renowned La Boulangerie partners Pascal Rigo, Nicolas Bernadi and their team bought it. 

But tragedy struck in 2017 when, after living in Santa Rosa for just five months, the couple lost their home in the Tubbs Fire that was, at that time, the most destructive blaze in California history. Upon evacuating, they fled to the Acqua Hotel in Mill Valley, the town where they’d lived for three years before heading northward.

It was in that moment, and in the months that followed, bringing so many highs and lows, that two ideas dominated their thoughts: beer and Mill Valley. 

The latter was simple: after years of living in San Francisco’s Presidio, then the 94941, then Healdsburg and Santa Rosa, “we realized that we just wanted to live here again,” Liz Fiedler says. In a supremely odd twist, the fire “gave us the opportunity to move back here and we realized our commutes had been terrible and that we just really loved it here.” Fast forward two years, and the couple is in the midst of rebuilding a house here in Tam Valley. 

And then there’s the beer: Dez Fiedler, a longtime attorney focused on real estate and financial services litigation before joining his wife to expand Loving Cup in 2013, is beer obsessed. Fiedler’s dream has been to open a beer garden in Tam Junction, a place where he could showcase the small batch microbrews he loves, from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay to Sonoma County.

​They connected with Carter Collins, longtime owner of the Collectible Coins & Jewelry shop at 226 Shoreline Hwy., and learned that Collins, who bought the building in 2013 after 20 years there as a renter, was amenable to leasing the space after longtime Marin Auto Science shut down (NOT, as previously reported, CR Automotive at 220 Shoreline Hwy., which remains very much in business).

​"This has been an odyssey for me," Collins says. "When I bought the building, I needed about 500 square feet of space for my business and now I had 6,000. Collins had minimal intentions for all that extra room – he planned to just park old cars there and fix them up over time. 

When the Fiedlers approached him with the idea, he said, "No, no, no, you want a silk purse and I’ve got a sow’s ear here. I had no business plan, really. They came along and they are, quite honestly, visionaries. They see this whole block and they see a whole new world."

If he needed any additional convincing, Collins' soon-to-be 88-year-old mom Patricia gave him an extra nudge. "She told me, 'What are you waiting for?' It is a now a truly a silk purse. It’s a transformation that I never ever envisioned."

The couple quickly realized that they also needed plenty of outdoor space if they were going to realize their vision for a dog-, kid- and bicyclist-friendly space where families could gather.

That was before outdoor space became the most sought-after real estate in the midst of a terror-inducing pandemic.

They turned their attention to a portion of the massive land behind Martin Brothers Supply, the longtime Tam Junction staple founded by Jack and Judy Martin. Part storage facility, part junkyard, the massive space was everything the Fiedlers had hoped for. But it’s also a completely separate property from that of Collins. That meant finding a workable arrangement involving two neighboring landlords agreeing to lease space to the same business.

So Dez Fiedler simply went and knocked on their door.

Not long after, they had a deal, a move that provided not only nearly 5,000 square feet of outdoor space to complement the 3,000 square feet of inside space, but also the property’s massive parking lot that allowed them to meet the County of Marin’s parking requirements for a business taking that much space.

"We weren't expecting to be approached about it," says Judy Martin, noting that the Martin family sold them the business in 1985, and they sold it to Rob and Gina Tuckey in 2005, but the family continued to own the land. "But we always thought this kind of thing, a more community-oriented business, was what we always wanted to see happen."

The Fiedlers spent the next 12 months clearing out the detritus, and as they drew closer to their vision, they realized it lacked a critically essential element: food.

That’s when Pete the Plumber – who else? – came to the rescue.

Peter Romeo is a plumber who has played a major role in residential and commercial buildouts all over the Bay Area for nearly 40 years, including Loving Cup locations for the Fiedlers. He told the couple that Krupman, a former software product manager turned local legend of sorts in the Bay Area food scene for having built a business on making pizzas in the streets and parks of San Francisco’s Mission district in the "FrankenWeber," a modified grill that he turned into a mobile pizza oven, had just moved to Sausalito. Given the continued success of Krupman’s Pizza Hacker brick-and-mortar business in Bernal Heights, Romeo said he might make for the perfect food partner for The Junction.

Having known the Fiedlers for years and as a diehard fan of Krupman’s pizzas, Romeo told them, “You guys would be so great together. It’s a marriage that just sort of had to be.”

Krupman says the timing of it all – his move to Marin and Pizza Hacker’s SF location long since solidified – compelled him to dive in almost right away. “I probably skipped a few steps on the due diligence front,” he jokes.

"But it works so well – I have no interest in beer and wine, and they have no interest in pizza," Krupman adds. "A great fit."


Krupman notes that Pizza Hacker's pizzas at The Junction will be 33 percent larger than those of his shop in Bernal, and he'll also be serving his Internezzo and Kale Caesar salads, as well as Mexican Coca-Cola. He'llalso be selling jars of his tomato sauce, made from tomatoes from Maqiquita Farms in Watsonville. 

MENU HERE.

​"I have spent a lot of time in breweries," Dez Fiedler says with a laugh.

The Junction's 30 taps are focused on "breweries with super limited distribution," Dez Fiedler says, from Cooperidge Brewing Company in Santa Rosa to Hop Dogma in Half Moon Bay. "We have three craft beer distributors but everything else is direct."

Those relationships have an added beneficial twist in the COVID-19 era, Fiedler says. Because tasting rooms are closed, beers that are rarely if ever available outside of those tasting rooms are now more widely available. For instance, The Junction has HenHouse's Red Overalls, a hard-to-find Vienna lager.  

"It's the fun part of the business," Fiedler says. "With direct relationships, you are meeting the people brewing the beer. A lot of the breweries we're working with are not big yet. You can help them grow. These are all small businesses predominantly within 100 miles of here, and every single beer on our tap list is from California."

The Junction also features a pair of rotating taps of hard kombucha, two taps of wine, and more by the bottle, glass, or to go.

​Pizza Hacker’s system allows customers to simply scan a QR code, select their food, order, pay via Google Pay, Apple Pay or via credit card and pizzas are brought to your table. “No unnecessary interaction,” says Krupman, noting that "we're serving only in The Junction's backyard at first, with pickup and delivery to follow soon thereafter via HackerTJ.com." 

"This is truly a place where you can come hang out and bring your kids and everybody can gather, almost a replacement for so many of us in Mill Valley with small and/or sloped backyards," said Liz Fiedler. "It’s really great to put something there that the whole community can enjoy."

“As plumbers, we love restaurants and cafes – we’ve built 40 or 50 of these places and we love have to relationships with them afterwards,” Romeo says. “And when you can put all of that together and bring people together, that’s the magic you need once in a while.”
​
The 411: The Junction and Pizza Hacker are at 226 Shoreline Highway in Tam Junction. Opens Wednesday, July 29. Open 3-9pm weekdays, 1-9pm on weekends. Enter directly through the backyard (not front door for now), and park on the south side of building (parking lot is connected to Dipsea Cafe parking lot). Eventually, long after The Junction's interior space is allowed to open in compliance with County health and safety guidelines, they'll host live music in the space as well. 

Here's the full menu of pizzas and food. (The Meatballer has been renamed Romeo after Pete the Plumber).

On the way: Gluten-free and takeout options.

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

Our EMV Films highlight some of the myriad creative businesses, organizations and people in Mill Valley. You’ve likely seen our films on some incredible local chefs, businesses with decades-long roots in town, the power of health and wellness, sustainability in the heart of Tam Junction, the spectacular Mill Valley Lumber Yard and the family-centric businesses along Miller Avenue. Photos of some of the amazing people running these businesses are below. We’ve got plenty more on the way! GO HERE to check them out. And then take the time to experience some of the array of restaurants,
shops, experiences and services that Mill Valley has to offer!

When acclaimed landscape architect Eldon Beck moved to Mill Valley in 1963 with his wife Helen and two children, he took a “monumental step in my quest for the unknown” that “opened my senses to the remarkable partnership of nature and village,” he writes in his 2019 tome, “Edges: Mountains, Forests and Creeks.”
​
Beck’s book poetically positions Mill Valley as a place with a deep connection to the nature that envelops it. Since Beck moved from Homestead Valley, where he was surrounded by nature and wildlife, to a house on Sycamore Ave., just a stone’s throw from downtown, he’s loved his walks to the Mill Valley Lumber Yard – “what a wonderful front door to the town,” he says of it – and downtown.

“The setting of Mill Valley has real permanence to it,” Beck says. “It’s an anchor, a kind of security blanket in the midst of all of the illness and tumult we’ve been going through recently.”

When he arrives downtown, Beck’s immediately drawn in by the Depot Plaza, which “functions as a meadow, an ecotonal clearing in a forest” where “parents, grandparents and others retreat to the edges to watch the performers, “mostly kids, adventure into the plaza.”

​“The flexible, level space in the plaza, free of cars, breeds imagination,” Beck writes. “Above pavement scrawled with kid-powered chalk lines and crooked hopscotch boxes, toddlers exploring the vertical world of scooters and trikes fueled by shrieks and laughter mix with the parade of every size, shape and color of dog. Children board the rebuilt Gravity Car and pretend to guide it down precarious trails.”

The dominant feature of that “meadow” is a building that, as Beck notes, is in the midst of ​“its third life.” The current Depot
Bookstore & Cafe began as a train station, built by the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in 1928. It served as the terminal for trains that ran between Mill Valley and the Sausalito ferry. Shut down in the 1940s, it morphed into a bus depot, used first by Greyhound and later by Golden Gate Transit.

“In a stroke of civil genius, bus stops were relocated, parking was removed and the parking area became the brick-paved plaza,” Beck writes about then-Mayor Dick Jessup’s creation of the plaza in 1982. The Depot assumed its new life as a coffee shop and bookstore, “a center of socializing and village life,” Beck writes.

Though it doesn’t qualify as the fourth life in its history, the Depot has entered a new chapter, a renovation that largely has two ​components: an overhaul of the Depot space, bringing the historic building up to code, upgrades to its infrastructure and spaces to ensure a great customer experience, as well as the construction of a pair of long-sought public restrooms adjacent to the Depot. The Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center remains in the building.

Paul Lazzareschi, who also owns Vasco restaurant, bought the business in 2016 from the family of the late Mary Turnbull, who founded the famed bookstore and cafe with her husband William Turnbull in 1987.

“We are thrilled to show off this revived and renovated Mill Valley institution to the entire community and visitors who come from far and wide to check out a landmark that is integral to this town,” says Mark Martini, a longtime local resident and a managing partner of the Depot.

Beck looks forward to taking one of his walks into town and spotting a just-revealed, gleaming Depot, surrounded by both nature and the din of children and parents.

“I can hardly wait,” he says.

You'll find this story and an array of other inspiring, practical content, from bits of wisdom to recipes and events (some day soon, we hope), in our 2020-21 EMV Guide, which appears within the August 2020 issue of Marin Magazine.
​
Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!.​

Muir Woods National Monument, the 558-acre preserve of towering redwood trees, right in our backyard, is the biggest tourist attraction in Marin and the crown jewel of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, drawing visitors for more than 100 years, including more than 900,000 in 2019.

But does it need a new name?

Set aside for protection in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt, the park is named after naturalist John Muir, who has been called “The Father of our National Parks" and a “Wilderness Prophet." Muir has, by a recent count from the San Francisco Chronicle, more than 50 places in California named after him, including our neighbor Muir Beach, as well as at least one high school, 21 elementary schools, six middle schools and one college named after him, as well as a glacier, a mountain, a woods, a cabin, an inlet, a highway, a library, a motel, a medical center, a tea room and a minor planet, according to Atlas Obscura. 

But Muir's words and actions were racist, harmful and egregiously out of step with modern society, and Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, the environmental organization Muir founded in 1892, said as much in a post on the organization's website last week. Saying it was time for some "truth telling" about Muir’s racist views and the white supremacist beliefs of the Sierra Club's original members, Brune noted that Muir “made derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life.”

“As the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history, Muir’s words and actions carry an especially heavy weight," Brune continued. "They continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.”

That hurt and alienation has no shortage of tangible examples. In 1838, the Cherokee Indians were evicted from their homes in the Smokey Mountains in the dead of winter by white settlers’ hungry for their land and gold—even though a U.S. treaty and a U.S. Supreme Court decision guaranteed their land rights—and forced to walk more than a third of the way across the continent to Oklahoma, a march that would kill 4,000 people and come to be known as the Trail of Tears.

Muir described the Cherokee homes he found as, “the uncouth transitionist …wigwams of savages,” according to the Atlas Obscura. "He described the homes of the very settlers who may well have drove them out as, 'decked with flowers and vines, clean within and without, and stamped with the comforts of culture and refinement.' For a man who supposedly walked with eyes wide open, this is a profound moment of blindness."

The Miseducation of John Muir piece continued:

Amidst our long overdue national and local reckoning with our nation's history of racism and systemic inequity, Americans have confronted the country’s past with vigor, particularly in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd on May 25. Removal of racist symbols like Confederate flags as well as monuments and street signs dedicated to problematic figures has been happening throughout the country.

But in the aftermath of Brune's post about the Sierra Club, the National Park Service doesn't appear to be interested in renaming the Muir Woods. In a statement issued July 23, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Muir Woods and Muir Beach said that National Park designations must be directed by Congressional legislation or presidential proclamation, but saw no need for a name change, according to the Mercury News.

“Across the country, the National Park Service maintains and interprets monuments and sites that commemorate and memorialize historical figures, including those who represent important, and painful, chapters in our nation’s history,” the agency said in the statement.

In the statement, GGNRA officials pointed out that Muir Woods already notes that the conservationist who proposed the monument’s name, William Kent, had “espoused anti-immigrant ideas.”

“A hallmark of American progress is our ability to discuss and learn from our history,” the agency said, adding that the park service “is committed to continuing to tell these stories throughout our nation, in all of their complexity.”

[Update 7.29.20]: The Planning Commission unanimously approved the proposed paint color changes and the removal of the balloon awnings demo the Depot building.
​
Since being deemed essential construction in May, the longstanding efforts to renovate the City-owned old train depot that is home to the Depot Bookstore & Cafe, the Mill Valley Chamber and a pair of new public bathrooms has been back on track.

Now owner Paul Lazzareschi, managing partner Mark Martini and their investors are set to go back to the City of Mill Valley on a few items that they hope will bring the project to the finish line in the coming weeks. 

First up, on Tuesday, July 28, they are seeking Planning Commission approval of an Amendment to the Design Review Permit for the Depot Building to allow for revised paint colors and permanent removal of the balloon awning window coverings. The proposal, which is shown on the rendering above, seeks to use the two paint colors as shown above instead of the same "salmon" exterior color, and to not replace the balloon awnings in order to allow the public full view of the historic arched windows and doors.

​The Commission reviews the proposal at its July 28th meeting at 7pm.  July 28, 2020 at 7:00 PM. WATCH IT HERE. For questions or to provide comments on this item, contact Lisa Newman, Senior Planner at (415) 388-4033 or via email here. STAFF REPORT HERE.

City Manager Alan Piombo also told the City Council last week that the they should expect to see a request to replace the existing roof because of "concerns it may not last through another rainy season," as well as the need to address the costs associated with connecting the building's fire sprinkler system.

"I will come back to council when I have some firm numbers," Piombo told the Council.

The project had been halted along with all construction during Marin County's first shelter in place order in mid-March. As weeks of inability to continue the project ground on, City and County officials were able to give the project a go-ahead as essential construction because of its inclusion of the public bathrooms, Acting City Manager Alan Piombo said.
​
"Our contractor with Hasz Construction prepared the site and put into place the requisite COVID-19 safeguards, including temperature checks, proper PPE, and social distancing protocols," Martini said. "We are relieved to get the project moving again and are eager to welcome the community to the Depot Café and Bookstore in the coming months."

The Depot first closed for the renovation in March 2019, and the fencing that heralded the beginning of construction went up in late December. Paul Lazzareschi, who owns the bookstore and cafe business that occupies the building, and his team of investors are focused on a project that largely has two components: an overhaul of the Depot space, bringing the historic building, particularly its bathroom and kitchen, up to code, as well as the construction of a long-sought, much-needed public restroom adjacent to the Depot.

The delay was largely triggered by expansive negotiations between the City and Lazzareschi over the financial details of the project, i.e., who was going to pay for each of its specific components, as well as turnover among investors. Lazzareschi, who also owns Vasco restaurant across the street from the Depot, first put forward plans soon after he and then-partner Gary Rulli bought the business in 2016 from the family of the late Mary Turnbull, who founded the famed bookstore and cafe with her husband William Turnbull in 1987 and died in September 2015.

The Depot pays the City a base rent plus a percentage of total sales. The depot building was built by the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in 1928. It served as the terminal for electric and oil trains that between Mill Valley to the Sausalito ferry docks. The railroad shut down in the 1940s and morphed into a bus depot, used first by Greyhound and later by Golden Gate Transit. In the 1970s, the building was re-invented as Ganey’s Bookstore and Cafe, which it remained until the Turnbull family took over the lease in 1987.

In April 2018, the Mill Valley City Council unanimously rejected an effort to stop plans to renovate the space and allow the construction of a long-delayed downtown public bathroom to proceed. City officials and Lazzareschi reached an agreement to incorporate the public bathroom construction into the Depot project to save costs and time. The public bathroom project was regularly discussed in 2014 and was fully budgeted in 2015 and conceptually dates back to 1984, when then-Mayor Richard “Dick” Jessup, who designed the Depot Plaza, first sketched out a downtown bathroom location.

To accommodate the construction, the Mill Valley Chamber, whose Visitor Center and office has also been in the City-owned building for decades, relocated to a temporary mobile office a few hundred feet away, in a pair of parking spaces on Miller Avenue across from Piazza D’Angelo.

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

Amidst a historic moment when the words Black Lives Matter need to be uttered, repeatedly, out loud, City of Mill Valley officials last week unveiled a new public art installation that declared just that, along with "Mill Valley Against Racism" and an encouragement for residents to learn more about the city's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.

Commissioned by the Arts Commission "as a response to community interest in showing support for members of the Black community who have experienced discrimination and individual, institutional, and structural racism," the public art piece was installed July 21 on a traffic signal control box at the corner of East Blithedale and Camino Alto near The Cantina and Body Kinetics. 
 
Within two days of the Tuesday, installation, however, someone either ill informed or with ill intent defaced the artwork on Thursday, but city staff repaired and restored it quickly Friday morning.

"The utility box art was designed on a template that each artist paints on and then is printed by a wrap company for the express purpose that if any part were to become damaged, that particular panel could be reprinted ASAP," Mill Valley Arts Commissioner Sharon Valentino wrote in a post on Nextdoor. "We had no idea however that it could be done in this case in the matter of a very few hours (same day), so we were very lucky. Let's hope this doesn't need to be repaired again because it is costly and the Arts Commission budget is small. Thanks for the support and care from everyone."

​"We acknowledge that there is a political organization with the same name – and some have interpreted the art piece as an endorsement of the organization," City officials said in a statement. "This is not the case. The artwork is a simple, yet powerful, statement that Black Lives Matter – and not associated with, nor an endorsement of, the organization in any way. We realize that Mill Valley has historically not fulfilled its stated intent to create a diverse, inclusive, and welcoming community for people of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Through this art piece and many other actions to come, we commit to working towards eliminating racial disparities, both inside government and in the community."

Here's the City Council's Resolution Affirming that Black Lives Matter. 

The Arts Commission recently reviewed several art projects in progress or under consideration – see that report here.

Learn more about the City's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives here.

RELATED COVERAGE:

• Kress Jack, Local Leaders Launch 'Raise the Frequency' to Support BIPOC, Start With Marin City Job Seekers
• Council Passes Resolution Backing Black Lives Matter Movement, Moves to Create Task Force & Acknowledges That Sustained Effort on Racial Justice Is Necessary
• Youth Movement: Tam High Students Have Driven the Powerful Local Protests in Support of Black Lives Matter
• One Week After Mayor's Comment Sparks Furor, City Council Promises to Address Racism and Injustice in MV
• For 2nd Day in a Row, Residents Flood the Streets of Mill Valley to Protest Racial Violence and Systemic Inequality
• Hundreds Turn Out to Miller Ave. & Camino Alto in Mill Valley for a Peaceful Protest Against Racial Violence

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

For more than a decade, Marina O’Neill has honored the adventurous spirit of grandmother Freda Marie Been in thrilling fashion, naming the flagship boat of her Sausalito-based SF Bay Adventures – an 80-foot, gaff-rigged tall ship available for private tours for up to 49 people and public sails – the Schooner Freda B.

“She was an amazing woman,” O’Neill says.

In recent months, the Freda B has been marooned, forced to sit idle in Sausalito because of COVID-19 health and safety protocols. 

"We have been largely closed since mid-March in response to the pandemic," O'Neill wrote to SF Bay's customers. "Since then, we've been busy re-organizing, strategizing, securing PPE and training our crew to meet the (ever-changing) moment. We're happy to announce that we're ready to re-open our decks! Per the current Marin County guidelines, we are now offering sails with limited capacity."

Marin County guidelines now allow charter boats to operate with 12 or fewer passengers email for availability and a quote. They also have several public sails, including the Friday Night Sunset Sail in the coming weeks and a Full Moon Sail on August 3.

O'Neill also launched a Go Fund Me campaign just a few weeks ago in an effort "to stay balanced. The pandemic has had a huge impact on friends, family and our thriving little business. We still need to ask for your support. If you can help us in any way, it will go directly to keeping our business afloat so we can pay our employees and slip rents, maintain our boats and support the maritime vendors that we depend on and that rely on us in turn."

​The Schooner Freda B. was built in 1991 and acquired by SF Bay Adventures in 2005, relocating it from Florida via the Panama Canal before sailing it into the San Francisco Bay after an 84-hour transit from Ensenada, Mexico. It’s a replica of a boat that would’ve sailed up and down the Pacific coast in the 1800s.

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

As previously reported, many Mill Valley restaurants have chosen transparency in recent weeks when it comes to positive coronavirus cases among their staff. 

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "these restaurant owners thought they were doing everything right: requiring employees to wear masks, keeping them as far apart as possible, putting hand sanitizer everywhere. Now they are starting to learn that those actions aren’t always enough. The coronavirus doesn’t recognize effort."

But even though businesses are not required to close for an extended period of time following a positive coronavirus case from its staff or to notify the public, business owners say it's critically important to be open and honest during a moment in history without precedent.

A critically important mechanism to stay vigilant is widely available testing, and the County of Marin is making strides toward that goal by offering free COVID-19 testing of all restaurant workers. Next up is free testing for all restaurant workers on Wednesday, August 5 at 1177 E. Francisco Blvd. in San Rafael from 7am-12pm and 1-4pm.

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