From Adirondack-inspired boats and glamorous robes to ecological textiles and a hub for distance runners, Mill Valley is chock full of eclectic-yet-authentic lifestyle brands.

Add an incredibly unique one to the list.

Mill Valley is now home to the retail shop of an equestrian, country polo-inspired brand created by a local resident. Louisiana native Elizabeth Goodwin Welborn’s five-year-old Stick & Ball brand is opening its first retail shop this week at 186 East Blithedale Avenue, with a launch party set for Thursday, Dec. 1 (2-8pm) featuring a Mill Valley Chamber ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor John McCauley, along with wines from Beaulieu Vineyard, Gloria Ferrer and Beringer Vineyards, cheeses selected by Napa Valley's Laura Werlin, empanadas from Playa Mill Valley and gift cards toward purchase in the new retail shop for all guests and the chance to win a polo lesson from one of California's polo clubs.

"Stick & Ball is inspired by polo played in the countryside but is not necessarily for an equestrian," says Goodwin Wellborn. "The brand is broadly appealing to those who love a casual luxury, town & country look for every day wear and this same casual equestrian luxury with an international twist for the home.”

The Stick & Ball Poncho is the brand’s signature piece, while hand-sewn, alpaca blankets, hand sewn leather belts, horse and geometric embroidered socks, and other equestrian-inspired pieces are part of its collection. The retail shop will also feature handmade leather boots from El Paso, Texas-based Lucchese, jewelry from a variety of local artisans and shoes from Alberto Fermani in Italy.

The move to open a retail shop in her hometown was a natural extension of the brand’s evolution, Goodwin Welborn says.
“As with most everything I’ve done, I just trusted my gut – this just felt like the right thing to do right now,” she says. “With so many of these products made by hand, customers want to be able to connect with that story, and I’m not able to tell that story by operating through other retailers.”

In addition to retail, the 800-square-foot space at 186 East Blithedale will serve as Stick & Ball’s design and work space as well.

“I very much want to have the different designers I work with come in and collaborate,” she adds. “Bringing ideas together is more feasible within this space.”

Born and raised in South Louisiana, Goodwin Welborn attended Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala., studying international business and Spanish. During her college summers, she studied in places like Guatemala and Costa Rica, learning about handmade textiles of Latin America and developing her Spanish.

“I just fell in love with the cultures of Latin America,” she says.

After college, Goodwin Welborn worked in business development for a Denver, Colo.-based boutique telecommunications firm that had her traveling extensively to Latin America for a couple of years. In 1999, that job brought her to San Francisco, and she’s lived in the Bay Area ever since. She moved to Mill Valley in 2001, and after a stint of living in Petaluma to be closer to her horses, she and her family moved back here in January.

Goodwin Welborn developed a love for horses at a very young age while briefly living in Scotland, and she rekindled that love in her mid-30s through the Cerro Pampa Polo Club in Petaluma and the Wine Country Polo Club in Oakmont, attending charity polo tournaments there.

It was those years that spawned Stick & Ball, with Goodwin Welborn drawing inspiration from her travels to Latin America and the fashion of the polo fields in places like Palermo, Argentina in particular.

“Ponchos, knitted berets, espadrilles, cowboys boots, Latin, country and bluegrass music, Argentine asados and pig roasts and one of the most thrilling team sports in the world all combine to create an atmosphere of on-field and field-side living that is both convivial and inspiring,” Goodwin Welborn writes on her website.

She launched the brand “literally on my Mill Valley kitchen table” in 2011, getting her ponchos in stores like 7 on Locust and Showroom, the former downtown Mill Valley apparel boutique co-founded by Denise Carletta and Janet Ryvin.

“Elizabeth was creating a brand that had that heritage feel, which is very hard to do with authenticity,” says Carletta, who now works with interior designer Kress Jack at her Kress Jack at Home shop on Locust Avenue. “That’s what has made her successful and what will continue to see Stick & Ball, that heritage feel and authenticity.”

The 411: Stick & Ball is hosting a launch party Thursday, Dec. 1 (2-8pm) featuring a Mill Valley Chamber ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor John McCauley at 4pm, along with wines from Beaulieu Vineyard & Beringer Vineyards, cheeses selected by Napa Valley's Laura Werlin, empanadas from Playa Mill Valley and gift cards toward purchase in the new retail shop for all guests and the chance to win a polo lesson from one of California's beautiful polo clubs. RSVP@stickandballco.com.

By Charlie Reynolds

For three decades, Mill Valley’s Singers Marin has long established its own take on the “think globally, act locally” mantra, singing everywhere from stages in Iceland and Australia to Bay Area concert venues and at the annual Winterfest celebration in downtown Mill Valley.

Letting choral voices reverberate around the world for 30 years signals a moment to recognize an nonprofit organization that has given countless would-be singers an opportunity to shine – and audiences the world over a chance to hear them.

“We’ll never turn down a voice that wants to sing,” says Singers Marin Founder and Artistic Director Jan Pedersen Schiff.

Born into a “very musical household,” Pedersen Schiff cultivated her own voice from a young age, beginning with church hymns under her mother’s tutelage as choir director. Those early years singing in a trio with her two sisters launched Pedersen Schiff into a life dedicated to music and the voice.

She went on to study and teach across the country and throughout Europe with a BA in Music Education from Augsburg College and a master’s degree in Choral Conducting from University of Colorado. In Los Angeles, Pedersen Schiff founded and directed her first choral group, the Hollywood Chorale, an all-women’s group of 50-60 voices. After she moved to Marin in 1986, Pedersen Schiff felt motivated by a lifelong passion and was armed with grassroots experience.

“I just felt like there was a need for choral music here,” she says.

Pedersen Schiff pursued her dream of filling Marin with choral voices the old-fashioned way, hitting bulletin boards and post offices armed with posters and cards. “It actually felt easier then – people sought out that kind of information,” she says of the decidedly less tech-driven way of spreading the word of those days. Pedersen Schiff’s efforts paid off, as she created Choral Singers of Marin in 1987 and garnered nonprofit 501(c)(3) status for it a year later. 

Pedersen Schiff’s first ensemble, Wings of Song, continues to grow today as an all-female chorus, primarily performing for Marin’s elderly audiences and hosting the 1994 California Women’s Chorus at the Marin Civic Center. That event provided opportunity to raise money for music scholarships. 

“I was a little nervous,” Pedersen Schiff explains. “It was our first time hosting a big event.” 

It was a complete success. The fundraising provided an unexpected surplus, and Pedersen Schiff reached out to Marin high schools to identify choral programs to fund. To her shock, however, “there really wasn’t much to give to,” as only a few high schools even had a program. 

Undeterred, Pedersen Schiff took it upon herself to launch Singers Marin’s very own honors choir. Dubbed les ètoiles, or “stars,” Singers Marin’s honor choir became the first of many youth groups serving singers of all ages. The “stars” have gone on to compete internationally, bringing home gold, silver, and bronze awards from stages around the world. 

“We feel that the work we are doing with children is vitally important to the future lives of this next generation,” Pedersen Schiff says.

The 411: Singers Marin’s choral groups perform at the 21st Annual Winterfest on December 4. Go to EnjoyMillValley.com for more details. The organization’s annual Holiday Concert, “Tis the Season...Traditions Near and Far,” is Dec. 18 at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium. MORE INFO. 

The Bay Area is home to the unbelievably talented Golden State Warriors and the fast-rising Oakland Raiders. But there are few juggernauts that can match the unparalleled success of the Tam High Mock Trial team, which has one countless Marin County, statewide and even national competitions over the past 20-plus years.

Because it's a club, the Mock Trial Team does not receive any funding from Tam High, so the students need to raise all the funds themselves for travel. With that in mind, Mock Trial team members will be volunteering at this Sunday's Winterfest celebration, helping kids down the sledding hill and handing sweet treats from Mill Valley Baking Company and hot chocolate and accepting donations. Founded by Mill Valley resident Kristin Silmore, Mill Valley Baking provides healthy snacks and delicious desserts for parties, school functions, corporate events, retail outlets and daily after school treats for the Mill Valley community and beyond. You can find their treats locally at Juice Girl Mill Valley.

Swing by the Mock Trial Team table at Winterfest and find out more about Tam's nationally recognized mock trial program that engages freshmen through seniors with the law and criminal justice system and serves as a venue for gaining leadership and public speaking skills. Support these local students – the winning-est team at Tam! MORE INFO.

Longtime Mill Valley resident Louise Dockstader was on vacation in July with a friend and her family in Provence in southern France when she saw an email would change her life.

The email was from Julie Stanton, the owner of the Once Around arts and crafts shop on Miller Ave., informing customers that she was closing the store due to a personal crisis. Dockstader’s reaction was echoed by a bevy of parents and kids all over town: “That can’t happen!”

Since Stanton opened the beloved shop at 352 Miller in 2010, it’s been the the go-to hub for all sorts of DIY projects, including felting, stamping, book-binding, sewing, fabric-painting, wreath-making, embossing, scrapbooking, decoupage, candle-crafting, soap-pouring, glitter, embroidery, knitting ... and, well, the list is seemingly infinite.

“I was just heartbroken,” Dockstader says of hearing the news. “We spent a lot of time and money in that store and we just loved the place.”

Dockstader initially thought that she could put together a group of people to buy the business from Stanton so that it didn’t go away. She reached out to Stanton when she got back from vacation, “still not thinking it would be me,” she says.

In one fell swoop over the past nearly four grueling months since that moment, Louise Dockstader has single-handedly brought joy to the local arts and crafts community – and taken a dramatic left turn in her impressive professional career.
She bought Once Around and re-opened it at 75 Throckmorton Ave. in downtown Mill Valley on Nov. 19.

“I did this because I believe that Mill Valley needs this kind of business,” she says. “This shop is filled with things that people need without having to get on the highway. I want to see Mill Valley succeed and continue to be this great, happy place for families and this store has a place in that Mill Valley.”

In doing so, Dockstader has come full circle on two fronts: her only traditional retail experience came as a cashier at Baytree Books on Throckmorton in the late 1980s, and her mother was a fashion designer and art teacher.

“Art was my first language, so this is really like coming home for me,” she says.

Dockstader grew up in Devon in southwest England, graduating from Oxford University with a focus in philosophy, politics and economics. After graduation, she came to the Bay Area in 1985 to visit her brother, who was at Stanford University getting his doctorate degree. She interned at a video production company that Kentfield native and future husband Noel Dockstader ran with his brother.

Dockstader decided to stick around the Bay Area for a bit, getting that job at Baytree as well as at Primetime Publicity, the now defunct Mill Valley-based public relations firm of Reed Trencher that was located in the Mill Creek plaza building space that is now home to The Hivery.

She rented a place in Tam Valley and eventually bought a condo in the Mill Creek Meadows development near Tam High. In 1990, she tied the knot with Noel Dockstader, a documentary filmmaker whose projects over the years have included Extreme Ice, a Nova special that followed photojournalist James Balog to some of the most remote and beautiful places on Earth to document the disappearance of their icy landscape, as well as the 2010 feature documentary film Collapse, which explored whether our modern, industrialized civilization could fall apart like great ancient ones before us, for National Geographic.

In 1991, the couple moved to the UK. “I was just homesick,” she says, “And if he was ever going to completely understand me, we had to live there.”

“I wanted him to see that I was weird because I was British not because I was unusual,” she adds with a laugh.

Over the span of the 13 years they lived in the UK, Dockstader dove into a series of creative opportunities, including a two-year stint as the marketing director for the Young Vic theater in London, working on productions with the likes Pete Townshend of The Who, the poet Ted Hughes and the famed writer Arthur Miller before he died.

She also worked for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as the creative director for Focus PR right in the early years of the Internet when businesses and agencies were starting to animate their websites.

“It was then that I felt that I needed to learn that world,” she says.
​
To do so, she attended Central Saint Martins College of Art, where her mother had gotten her degree in fashion design many years before. After art school, Dockstader took a position as a production manager at Elephant, a children’s television production company that produced work for the BBC, among other broadcasters.

Louise and Noel Dockstader and their then-7-year-old son moved back to Mill Valley in 2004, while Louise was pregnant with their daughter. She took a job at educational gamer maker Leapfrog as an animation producer for four years, and later the same role for video game maker Ubisoft. For the past five years – literally up to the days before she opened Once Around – Dockstader has been the executive producer for Playstudios, a mobile game company based in Burlingame. She continues to consult for Playstudios.

Since Stanton and Dockstader struck their deal in September, the latter has continued to work 60-hour weeks at Playstudios. Noel Dockstader's latest project, a documentary about Solar Impulse, the Swiss long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft project, has had him and his crew embedded with the Solar Impulse team for 10 months to document their Solar Impulse 2 plane’s completion of a full circuit of the globe.

“It’s been a really, really manic three-to-four months,” Dockstader says, pointing to the “army of volunteers” that helped her make it all happen, including family, friends, her kids and friends of her kids. They were informed that the owner of 352 Miller wanted to do something else with the building, they moved Once Around out of the old space in mid-September into 1,200-square feet of storage space in Larkspur and Novato.

She connected in early October with Jack Lee and Christine Lum, the owners of the building that contains 75 Throckmorton, and got the keys for the space on Nov. 1. Since then, it’s been a mad scramble to fit as much of a once-3,600-square-foot shop into a space that contains less than 1,000-square-foot of retail space.

“We couldn’t fit the florals, which take up so much space,” she says with a sigh. “But just about everything else from the old shop is here. It's so exciting.”

The 411: Once Around is at 75 Throckmorton Ave. in downtown Mill Valley. In the coming weeks, Dockstader says she plans to use a small space at the back of the retail shop for a classroom, reviving the shop's after school and adult arts and crafts programs. MORE INFO.

Marin Theatre Company has hired Keri Kellerman, the managing director of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, Minn., as its managing director. Kellerman replaces Michael Barker, who ran MTC for two years and is now the managing director of the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut. Kellerman will start at MTC on January 2.

“Keri has spent her career creating exciting opportunities for playwrights and other artists to follow their visions and to lead their communities," says MTC Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis. "She has forged powerful and profound community partnerships locally and nationally that allow her artists to push ever forward with building a better, more just and compassionate society. I look forward to the future we will create for our company and community.”

Kellerman joined the Playwrights’ Center in 2013, and previously led the Intiman Theatre’s revival in partnership with artistic director Andrew Russell. She also held leadership positions at organizations in Seattle, including UW World Series at Meany Hall, On the Boards, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Seattle Repertory Theatre.

“I’m honored to join its dedicated community of artists, board members, staff, and audiences to embrace theater in all its complexity and humanity,” Kellerman says. “As MTC celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, I look forward to partnering with Jasson to help shape a future where the depth of our resources matches the height of our imagination.”

Looking for ways to support Miller Avenue area businesses during the massive, 18-month Miller Avenue Streetscape Project?

It's time to walk the walk. Miller Avenue area restaurants and shops are teaming up for the Snack 'n Shop, the first in what they hope will be a series of events that encourage residents to eat out on Miller and do some of their holiday shopping nearby. The event is set for Tuesday, Dec. 6, 5:30-8:30pm at restaurants like Grilly's, Super Duper Burger, Tamalpie Pizzeria, Samurai Sushi, Joe's Taco Lounge, Juice Girl, Antone's East Coast Subs and retail shops like Mill Valley Music, Toyhouse, Earthly Nutrition and Tam Bikes, among others.

Several businesses on Locust Avenue, including 7 on Locust, Kress Jack at Home and Poet and/the Bench will be showcasing new art as part of the First Tuesday Artwalk, with a wine and cheese reception from 6-8pm. 

"We know the past several months haven't been easy for our Miller Avenue area businesses, and we'll continue to do everything we can to help them," says Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center Co-Director Paula Reynolds. "Now it's your turn! We really hope you come out and support Miller Avenue area businesses at the Snack 'n Shop."

Here's the full list of participants:

Two years after Julie Zener and Tara Schon opened their Zener Schon Contemporary Art gallery in the Seager Gray Gallery's former space at 23 Sunnyside Avenue, the duo have decided to go "beyond the walls," closing the gallery but committing to the other facets of their business.

"In the interest of being more flexible with business operations and to attend fully to these projects we love so much, we are letting go of the retail space – we are moving beyond our walls," Zener and Schon wrote in an email to customers. "We will continue our core services of in-home art consultation, presence at art fairs, staging services, residential and commercial mural installations, and large scale public sculptural installations for civic settings and festivals.

They're hosting a closing sale on select works on Dec. 19-20,12-6pm at 23 Sunnyside Avenue.

There are few things we love more than when media outside the 94941 shine a light on one of the many jewels of Mill Valley.

7x7 magazine has done just that with a story on the Mill Valley Lumber Yard, a look at the property's historic past, vital present and hugely promising future. The piece charts the tourney of Matt and Jan Mathews, who bought the property in 2012 from the Cerri family, which had owned and maintained it as a lumber yard and True Value hardware store for the previous 14 years. The property was built by lumber magnate Robert Dollar in 1892 as Dollar Lumber Company.

The Mathews family initially sought to find "other lumber and hardware businesses to see if they wanted to expand and take over the space, but sadly no one had the bandwidth to do so." They eventually connected with Restoration Hardware founder Stephen Gordon, who also had "a strong vision for what MVLY should become in its second life. They all agreed that they wanted to support an authentic American downtown experience by incorporating businesses that would offer only the highest quality specialty goods made by local artists and creators."

Gordon's Guideboat, Molly de Vries' Ambatalia and Gayle Nicoletti's Bloomingayles have been fixtures at MVLY ever since, bringing an eclectic mix of unique businesses whose aesthetic fits perfectly onto the property. 

And four years after the Mathews' bought MVLY, they're racing to implement the changes that garnered the unanimous approval of the City Council in July. The Mill Valley Lumber Yard is a 42,500-square-foot site at 129 Miller Avenue with 17,616 square feet of existing building space.

The Mathews previously renovated some of the buildings and plan to upgrade others. Those buildings are primarily at the southeast half of the property and include a proposed small cafe/restaurant, as well as some retail, offices and an artist-in-residence space, in addition to what's there now.

FULL 7x7 STORY.

Tam Junction is home to some of Mill Valley's most like-minded businesses and two of them – Equator Coffees' Proof Lab Cafe and San Francisco Running Company – are collaborating around their shared interests.

On Thursday, Dec. 1, Equator Proof Lab and SF Running Co. are partnering to present a screening of the documentary Life In A Day, which chronicles the June 2016 edition of the Western States 100, a 100-mile ultra-marathon that takes runners from Squaw valley to Auburn on Sierra Nevada mountain trails.

​The film, directed by Bill Yang, in inspired by legendary ultra-marathoner Ann Trason's quote, "I've always just looked at 100 miles as life in a day. You have all the trials and tribulations of a life in one day."

The event kicks off at 5:30pm with a Hoka One One Group Run from San Francisco Running Company, followed by the screening at 7pm outside of Equator Proof Lab at 244 Shoreline Hwy. Yang and ultra-runners Devon Yanko and Magdalena Boulet will sit down for a post-screening Q&A, with plenty of gear from SF Running Co. and GU raffled off as well. MORE INFO.

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