Hungry?

If the answer is no, we're about to change that.

On the eve of the 33rd Annual Mill Valley Market Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting, set for June 22 from 1–4pm in the Depot Plaza downtown, with proceeds going to the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce and Kiddo!, the Mill Valley Schools Community Foundation, we're about to get your taste buds a teaser of what they can expect from the 11 fantastic local restaurants who'll be showcasing their menus on Sunday.

This landmark event is all about consuming some of the best wine, beer and food you'll find anywhere in the Bay Area or beyond. For the 2014 edition of the event, which has been hosted by Mill Valley Market since 1981, wine from 60 premium wineries, beer from nine craft breweries (including Mill Valley's own Beerworks and Headlands Brewing Co.) and food from more than 20 food purveyors and 11 local restaurants and chefs.

Here are the 11 local restaurants and the fantastic food they'll be showcasing at the 33rd Annual Mill Valley Market Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting:

• Balboa Café – Grilled Corn on the Cob w/ roasted garlic aoli, parmesan cheese and smoked sea salt.
  
• Beerworks – Roasted Indian eggplant w/ smoked tomato relish.
  
• Beth's Community Kitchen – Mini Brioche Sandwiches (egg salad, tuna, BLT), along with pastries, pizzette and ginger snaps.
  
• Bungalow 44 – The restaurant's famous Kobe beef and Lamb meat balls.
  
• La Ginestra – Polpette alla Napoletana (Neapolitan meatballs).
  
• Molina – A selection of Chef Todd Shoberg’s market-based fare, including produce pulled from the ground that morning from local farmers, fish caught with lines in nearby rivers and ocean waters and hand-picked oysters and shellfish, as well as local meats like rabbit, pig, quail and cattle that Shoberg feels are raised in a truthfully humane manner.
  
• O Baby Bar – Vegan brittle with coconut sugar and a tavern nut bar.
  
• Pasta Pomodoro – Insalata de Faro (Ancient Italian grain tossed with roasted vegetables, salsa verde and pecorino cheese), as well as Polenta Farcita (Polenta rolled and stuffed with organic spinach and provolone cheese, topped with brown butter and crispy sage).
  
• Piazza D'Angelo – Capunti do Grano Arso, a burnt wheat pasta from Southern Italy, in a lamb ragu with goat cheese from Achadinha Cheese Company in Petaluma.
  
• Prabh Indian Kitchen – Chicken Tikka Masala and Chicken Naan.
  
• Tony Tutto Pizza – A variety of vegetarian pizzas, including both menu favorites and market-driven specials just for the event.
  

The 33rd Annual Mill Valley Wine, Beer and Gourmet Food Tasting is presented by Bank of the West with co-sponsors Pacific Union Real Estate, PG&E, Bradley Real Estate, Marin Modern Real Estate and Mini of Marin. Supporting sponsors include Urban Sitter for the KidZone, Tam Bikes for complimentary bicycle parking and Mill Valley Refuse. 

Record attendance of more than 1,000 participants is expected this year. Tickets are $50 in advance and $60 on the day of the event. 

Click here for more info and to buy tickets.

The newest wrinkle of the 33rd Annual Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting presents both short- and long-term benefits for parents attending the event, set for June 22 from 1­4pm in the Depot Plaza.

The short-term win from the first-time inclusion of the KidZone is the ability to attend the event with the peace of mind that your children will be in safe, fun, creative and nurturing place just a few dozen yards way from you as you enjoy some of the best food and drink the Bay Area has to offer.

The long-term gain is the possibility of finding your favorite babysitter, as KidZone sponsor Urban Sitter operates an online system by which you can access 250 babysitters in southern Marin, using your own friends (and their friends) for recommendations.

“Urban Sitter is a website that connects babysitters and families and connects them through people you know,” says Colette Perachiotti, Urban Sitter’s community manager for Marin. “Parents can find a sitter and the site will show them who their friends have used. So you’re not just going online and finding a random sitter but finding those who your friends have used.”

The three-year-old site also gives users the ability to focus on specific criteria for sitters, such as CPR training, languages spoken

“And you can pay by credit card and not have to go to the ATM before you come home,” Perachiotti adds.

A number of sitters hired by event organizers through Urban Sitter will be in the KidZone leading crafts like “make your own bandanas.” Marin Theatre Company staff will also be on hand with their “Dramativity” booth, leading a “make your own Play” workshop featuring a “rack of costumes and props and easy things kids can throw on and off to make their own characters,” according to Mariel Rossman, MTC’s education coordinator.

Kids will engage in theater games, with staff using a script and calling on characters and have them act out what’s happening, Rossman says. “It moves quickly and it’s really fun,” she adds.

Click here for more info and to buy tickets for the 2014 Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting.

In the 11 months since they launched Headlands Brewing Company, Mill Valley residents Phil Cutti and Patrick Horn have been among the hardest working duos in the brewing business, personally filling every role in the operation, from brewmaster to distributor and everything in between.

If the pair was searching for tangible proof that their hard work was paying off, it arrived earlier this week in the form of 150,000 16oz. cans, ready to be filled with one of Headlands’ three beers and waiting for its label to be slapped upon them. The leap reflects a steady spike in production from about 90 barrels total every four to six weeks up to about 220 barrels a month.

“To have the confidence of our board to make such a big next move – you have to pay for those cans up front,” Cutti says. “We’re really seeing some consistent growth, and that’s prompted this next big step. We’re feeling great about where we are.”

Headlands will showcase its beers at two upcoming local events: a Meet the Brewer event at the Sweetwater on June 16, and at Mill Valley Market Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting event on June 22 in the Depot Plaza.

The company’s early success is the product of hard work, but it’s also the result of the Bay Area brewing community from which it has spawned. Cutti and Horn are as steeped in the Bay Area home-brewing scene as any pair running an 11-month-old brewery could be, and they’re leaning on that tight-knit community as they catapult to new heights.

Take their fellow local brewers at Mill Valley Beerworks, who launched their 40-barrel Fort Point Beer Co. in the Presidio in January. Cutti has done some work for the four-year-old downtown Mill Valley outfit, and they collaborated on Ned, a Flanders Sour Red named after The Simpsons’ character. When it came time for Headlands to do some contract brewing – leasing space within another brewery to avoid the costs of running its own facility, a strategy often referred to as “gypsy brewing” – Beerworks owners Justin and Tyler Catalana were game, leasing Headlands space at Fort Point. Headlands is currently brewing its Hill 88 Double IPA and Groupe G Belgian RyePA at Fort Point and its Point Bonita Rustic Lager, a pilsner, at Sudwerk in Davis.

Justin Catalana says Cutti and the Beerworks team hit it off right away in terms of creative energy and a dedication to making great beer, so supporting Headlands’ fledgling brewery made perfect sense. When Cutti told Catalana this week that Headlands was nearing its one-year-anniversary, he was stunned.

“I honestly thought it had been a lot longer than that,” Catalana says. “They’ve really worked hard to make it happen.”

“We all just try to look out for each other,” Cutti says of the local brewing community. “People ask about competition among us, as in, ‘Aren’t you trying to try to take that person’s tap handle at a bar?’ – but a high tide raises all boats – so if we make each other make the best beer we can by teaching someone the best technique or by helping someone with equipment, it helps us all.”

Though their company is still in its infancy, Cutti and Horn are not entirely newbies. Horn is one of the co-founders of Pacific Brewing Laboratory and Cutti has been brewing at Southpaw BBQ in San Francisco in recent years. They connected at an event put on by the Sirwisa Brewing Collective, Cutti’s organization for home brewers who want to move to the commercial side. Sirwisa is the Peruvian word for beer – Cutti is of Peruvian descent.

Cutti started home brewing in 1995, and began thinking about it as a career in the early 2000s. But then the University of San Francisco grad became the director and exercise physiologist of the Human Performance Lab at Stanford, a great job that delayed the transition.

He later met Horn, who’d spent the better part of his career as a lobbyist in Washington, DC, primarily for the alternative energy business. They connected over their love of endurance sports, specifically long-distance open water swimming, a bond that seems to take a back seat only to brewing beer.

Through the open water swimming group Night Train Swimmers, Cutti met Matthew Davie, a Belvedere resident whose career in the tech sector has included stints at the Walt Disney Company and as CEO of Breaktime Studios. Davie now sits on Headlands’ board and handles the financial of the business.

“We’ve shown that we can make great beer at scale this quickly,” Davie adds. “For a company that’s on this trajectory, they’re doing exponentially more with less resources than other companies would be at this point. They’ve stayed true to themselves.”

Kim Sturdavant, brewmaster at Social Kitchen & Brewery in San Francisco’s Sunset District and an alum of Marin Brewing Company, says Cutti and Horn have a work ethic that matches their talent.

“They’ve been hustling since day one,” he says. “They’re just all over the place, handling every aspect of their business. I’m expecting their product to get better and better.”

Headlands’ three-year plan included adding a brick-and-mortar facility in the third year. They’ve pushed that leap into year two, hoping to ink a lease on a space, preferably in southern Marin, in the next 12 months.

“We’ve looked at some spots in the city, but with a name like Headlands, it behooves us to be in Marin,” Cutti says. “We always wanted to be a near the mountain and the bay. Marin speaks to us in that way.”

Cutti and Horn take their two-man operation to the distribution side of things as well, personally checking in with the beer buyers at places like Mill Valley Market, Whole Foods, BiRite, BevMo and Tony Tutto Pizza, all of which carry their beers.

At the June 22 Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food event, Headlands will be pouring a limited edition Hill 88 Double IPA aged in Four Roses Bourbon barrels especially to be sold at Mill Valley Market.

“You have to make bets on good people – Patrick and Phil are incredibly quality people, and they were put on this planet to make great beer,” Davie says. “It’s that simple.”

The 411: For more info on Headlands Brewing Company, check out their Facebook, Twitter, and website. And click here for more info and to buy tickets for the Mill Valley Market Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting event on June 22 in the Depot Plaza

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Organizers of the 33rd Annual Mill Valley Market Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting, set for June 22 from 1–4pm in the Depot Plaza downtown, with proceeds going to the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce and Kiddo!, the Mill Valley Schools Community Foundation, have made a slew of new additions to the 94941's iconic downtown event, including:

• Making Kiddo!, the non-profit Mill Valley Schools Community Foundation, a co-beneficiary of the event, along with the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce 
  
• Including complimentary valet bicycle parking, provided by the Marin County Bicycle Coalition and sponsored by Tam Bikes in Mill Valley
  
• Creating a KidZone, sponsored by Urban Sitter, provides a fun environment for children agree 2 to 8 and features entertainment, arts and crafts and free childcare services for event attending parents

But while these additions are meant to encourage alternative forms of transportation and help parents with young children attend this fantastic event, they're mere compliments to the main course: some of the best wine, beer and food you'll find anywhere in the Bay Area or beyond. For the 2014 edition of the event, which has been hosted by Mill Valley Market since 1981, wine from 60 premium wineries, beer from nine craft breweries and food from more than 20 food purveyors and 11 local restaurants and chefs.

With that in mind, here's the full list of all of the great brands that will be at the 33rd Annual Mill Valley Market Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting:

The 33rd Annual Mill Valley Wine, Beer and Gourmet Food Tasting is presented by Bank of the West with co-sponsors Pacific Union Real Estate, PG&E, Bradley Real Estate, Marin Modern Real Estate and Mini of Marin. Supporting sponsors include Urban Sitter for the KidZone, Tam Bikes for complimentary bicycle parking and Mill Valley Refuse. 

Record attendance of more than 1,000 participants is expected this year. Tickets are $50 in advance and $60 on the day of the event. 

Click here for more info and to buy tickets.

The County of Marin is proposing a new colored placard system for consumers hoping for more clarity on the food safety inspection results of their favorite restaurants – and for restaurants hoping to tout their stellar food safety scores.

The proposed “Go For Green” program, which heads to the Marin County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, June 3, centers on the placement near a restaurant’s entrance of placards that would mimic a traffic light – green for go (“pass”), yellow for caution ("conditional pass") or red for stop ("closed"). It’s called the.

“With a glance at the placard, the public will be able to determine whether it is clean and safe to dine in,” Rebecca Ng, Deputy Director of the County’s Environmental Health Services (EHS) Division, said in a statement. “The more interest the public shows in restaurant ratings, the more care the restaurants might show in producing a clean environment with safely prepared food.”

Mandated by the California Retail Food Code, EHS permits and inspects retail food facilities throughout Marin County. In addition to routine inspections, EHS staff responds to health and safety complaints as well as reports of food-borne illness associated with a food facility.

Ng said the public has become more interested in food safety with a desire for more information about health conditions at food facilities. Strong ratings tend to increase customer trust and are considered good for business.

Supervisors will hear the proposed ordinance June 3 and again on June 17 if the board agrees to move it forward. If approved, a trial run would begin in July along with “Go For Green” classes for food facility employees. If all goes well, placards would be visible to consumers starting in January 2015.

The proposed “Go For Green” program would supplement the online posting of food facility inspection reports at the County’s food inspection website. Click here to view the food inspection reports for all 129 of the food-serving businesses in the 94941.  

A new mobile website for smartphones allows Marin users to find out about health inspection track records of a restaurant before they scan a menu and place an order. “When you’re out, the mobile app makes it easy to check this information as if you were at home on a PC or laptop,” Ng said.

 Placard systems are already in place in Sacramento and Alameda counties, and Santa Clara County is considering the system along with Marin. Local food facility owners were invited to a March 2014 meeting to hear about the proposal and provide input. Ng said there is solid support for the placard proposal.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to discuss the proposal at around 10 a.m. Tuesday, June 3, in the board's chambers, room 330 at the Marin Civic Center. The meeting will be streamed live and archived here.

What do you think of the proposed placard program?  Would you use it as a consumer? Tell us in the Comments below.

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

The following is part of Ronnie's Awesome List, an unbelievably comprehensive roundup of family-friendly events throughout the Bay Area. Click here for the full list!

Monday, June 2
Clever Jackie Takes the Cake, 11am-12pm, first graders of Stinson School invite you to come enjoy their performance of Clever Jackie Takes The Cake, to help us kick off summer reading, Stinson Beach Library.

Summer Salistace, Treasure Island.

Tuesday, June 3
Henna Art Workshop, 7-8pm, Henna artist Rachel-Anne Palacios will explain the traditions of henna art and demonstrate techniques, Point Reyes Station Library Meeting Room.

Wednesday, June 4
Family Astronomy Night, 7:30pm, Join local astronomer Ken Frank who will talk about astronomy and the day and night sky. In conjunction with our Summer Reading Program, Fizz Boom Read! Belvedere-Tiburon Library.

4 Year Anniversary Party, 5-7pm, tapas, sangria and more, Whole Foods, Blithedale, Mill Valley.

Noon Concert Series, 12pm, free, Anne Rainwater, piano solo: Works include Haydn Sonata in E-Flat Major and Bach’s First, Keyboard Partita, Throckmorton Theatre, Mill Valley.

Grove on the Road, 5-7pm, Instrument petting zoo with Magik*Magik Orchestra, art workshop, and more! Joe DiMaggio Playground, Powell and Lombard, San Francisco.

Click here for the full list of events through June!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the heels of 2013’s “Let the Good Times Roll” theme, parade moves toward a more traditional focus, “Honoring Those Who Gave Their Lives for Freedom.” Pre-parade Pancake Breakfast and post-parade Kiddo! Carnival, Concert and Community Celebration bookend the day-long party of the year in Mill Valley.

The daunting “fashion police” will be out in full force as usual at the Mill Valley Memorial Day Parade on May 26, and this year they won’t just be looking to issue citations for "don'ts" like jean shorts, leather fanny packs and sockles.

Be warned: the 2014 edition of the parade is all about breaking out your red, white and blue duds.

The biggest day-long party of the year in the 94941, the Memorial Day Parade, along with the pre-parade Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters’ Association’s Pancake Breakfast and the post-parade Kiddo! Memorial Day Community Celebration (see below), are taking a traditional turn this year. In response to calls from veterans to make the event more traditional, the I Love a Parade Committee is building the parade around the theme of “Honoring Those Who Gave Their Lives for Freedom.”

“It makes sense, especially to remind the children of Mill Valley what this holiday is all about,” said Larry “the Hat” Lautzker, head of the I Love a Parade Committee that runs the event. “We had gotten a bit too far left of what the event is all about. This year, we’re going to be more inclusive of that. It’s a somber day and we’ve kind of disregarded that element of it for a while.”

In addition to fellow committee members Clifford Waldeck and Paul Moe, a subcommittee consisting of longtime prominent local residents Jim Wickham, Stephanie Wickham-Witt, Larry Moss, Chris Raker and Susan Cluff has focused on incorporating a more traditional theme into this year’s parade.

“Break out the Red White and Blue, build wondrous floats, great window displays and show our kids and country how creativity and working together help to create amazing results,” Lautzker said.

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

Lautzker said that while the parade will be much more inclusive of Mill Valley’s original Memorial Day Parade, it won’t lose the community party spirit that has been so evident over the past decade. The parade, which begins at 10:30 at Old Mill School and runs down Miller Avenue to Tam High, regularly draws more than 6,000 spectators each year, and includes more than 60 participants. 

Applications to enter are now available online, and must be received by May 23. Entry fees are $75 for commercial entities and $35 for nonprofits.

Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters' Association Pancake Breakfast

When the Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association launched its annual Pancake Breakfast nearly 20 years ago, John Thompson, Fred Martin, John McClure and Bob Hughes, among others, cobbled together a bunch of portable grills, coolers and propane tanks and prepared to serve up a Memorial Day breakfast for a few hundred people.

And then 800 showed up. And hundreds more showed every year after that, with volunteers serving up some 1,500 to 2,000 plates each and lines forming around the block outside the Mill Valley Fire Department’s downtown station on Corte Madera Avenue.

The massive event is set for 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on traffic-free Corte Madera Ave. in front of City Hall and outside the fire station with pancakes, eggs, sausage, juice and coffee.

As the Pancake Breakfast has continued to grow over the years, one aspect of it has gone largely unnoticed: the event’s organizers have created quite a mobile kitchen setup that would come in handy in the event of a catastrophic event like a massive wildfire or earthquake, says Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighter Ron Vidal.

“We feed nearly 15 percent of Mill Valley’s population in four hours on that day,” Vidal says of the Pancake Breakfast. “We’re building resiliency and the ability to do a mass feeding if we’re ever in that situation.”

In addition to showcasing an impressive mobile kitchen, the Pancake Breakfast is also the biggest fundraiser of the year for Mill Valley’s volunteer firefighter program. The Mill Valley Fire Department took shape more than 120 years ago as an all-volunteer organization, beating out some fires with wet potato sacks and renting space to store its gear.

“You keep the department strong by continuing to develop that volunteer pool,” Vidal says. “The program creates a candidate pool for the hiring needs for Mill Valley and departments all over Marin and the Bay Area.”

Volunteer program officials estimate that it costs about $4,000 to properly train and equip an active duty firefighter and the group hopes to raise between $10,000 and $15,000 at this year’s event.

Kiddo! Memorial Day Community Celebration

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

That includes the final day of the four-day Carnival, which begins Friday at noon and wraps up at 5 p.m. Monday. With more than 15 rides, from the Berry-Go-Round and Tune Train for little ones to the Sizzler, Zipper, Tilt-A-Whirl and Texas Tornado, are being provided by Sacramento-based California Carnival Company. 

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

Advance $20 ticket books are available in the Kiddo! office at the Mill Valley School District from May 19 May 22 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on May 23 from 9 a.m. to noon. Advance tickets will also be sold outside the Mill Valley Community Center during the week leading up to the Carnival – times TBD. Ticket books are $30 once the carnival begins. Books may be turned in for a one-day wrist band for unlimited rides. Food and games are extra.

Aside from rides, the Community Celebration features food from the likes of Piazza D'Angelo, Beth's Community Kitchen, Nothing Bundt Cake, among others. And as in year's past, a Concert on the Green, sponsored by the Sweetwater Music Hall & Cafe, will keep attendees dancing throughout the afternoon.Local prodigies Matt Jaffe & the Distractions get things started at noon, followed by Lebo & Friends, fronted by Lebo (Dan Lebowitz), a founding member of ALO. Melvin Seals & the JGB headline, playing the music of the late and legendary Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia.

The 411: The annual Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association’s Pancake Breakfast takes place from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on traffic-free Corte Madera Ave. in front of City Hall and outside the fire station with pancakes, eggs, juice and coffee. Fees are $7 for adults and $5 for kids with all proceeds to benefit the Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association to equip a new batch of volunteer recruits.

The Mill Valley Memorial Day Parade begins at 10:30 at Old Mill School and runs down Miller Avenue to Tam High, regularly draws more than 6,000 spectators each year, and includes more than 60 participants. Applications to enter are now available online, and must be received by May 23. Entry fees are $75 for commercial entities and $35 for nonprofits.

The Kiddo! Memorial Day Community Celebration runs from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Monday. The four-day Carnival is Friday 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Monday 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Here's a video about from the 2014 Mill Valley Memorial Day Parade website about this year's theme:

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The Mill Valley Planning Commission is set to hold a public hearing on April 28 at 7 p.m. on the application for amending the Tyler Florence Shop’s conditional use permit to add a demonstration kitchen and to hold classes and private events, limited alcohol sales, and limited filming of online content at its existing 3,395 square foot retail store at 59 Throckmorton Avenue.

Shop owners Tyler and Tolan Florence hope to time the creation of the demo kitchen with the retrofit work occurring in their building’s adjacent shop, which Vintage Wine & Spirits vacated earlier this year, and the subsequent construction of the four already-approved “Aloha Lofts” residential units on the second floor of the building.

“Ever since we opened in 2008, we have wanted to host cooking classes, demonstrations and private events in our shop,” Tyler and Tolan Florence wrote in an email to customers earlier this year. “The building’s construction provided a long-sought opportunity to build a test kitchen at a time when the customer experience might be disrupted anyway by the dust and noise coming from the second floor.”

The Planning Commission approved the Aloha Lofts – four rental units between 750 and 940 square feet in size – in October 2012. Lee Lum L.P. has owned the building and the large parking lot behind it for 20 years.

The eventual residents of the Aloha Lofts will be the first people since 1956 to live on the second floor of one of downtown Mill Valley’s most prominent buildings. It was built by Michael O’Shaughnessy, who owned it until he died in 1934, according to Barbara Ford of the Mill Valley Historical Society. It is widely known as the O’Shaughnessy Building, she said.

The upstairs space was condemned in 1956 after serving as a lodging house of sorts during World War II for employees of the Sausalito Shipyards and the Red Cross, operating under the name the Aloha Lido Hotel. Incredibly, the 4,000-square-foot space at Throckmorton and Corte Madera avenues has been empty ever since, through multiple building owners and many popular tenants in the storefronts below.

San Rafael attorney Riley Hurd will represent the Tyler Florence Store at the April 28 hearing.

City officials remind local business owners and residents that all interested persons are welcome to attend and to comment, in person or in writing, at the public hearing. All Planning Commission meetings are webcast live and archived and may be viewed by clicking here. 

Enjoy Mill Valley Blog is sponsored by the following local businesses:

For Mill Valley foodies, few events rival the arrival of the quarterly Edible Marin & Wine Country magazine. The gorgeous publication's special butter- and eggs-themed Spring 2014 issue pays homage to the storied history of farming and ranching in our area, with a special nod to Woolly Egg Ranch on Tennessee Valley Road. 

The co-founder of the San Rafael-based specialty coffee company, which has one shop at the Proof Lab Surf Shop in Tam Valley and one on the way in downtown Mill Valley, talks about Equator's history, its philosophy and her undying love of coffee.

Less than a year ago, Equator Coffees & Teas was a much-loved specialty coffee business, farming and roasting their own beans in San Rafael and selling them at markets and cafes throughout California and as far-flung as Boston and New York City. While Equator, which launched in a garage in Corte Madera in 1995 and later moved to a 5,400-square-foot warehouse near Davidson Middle School in San Rafael, had more than 250 customers that include chef Thomas Keller’s French Laundry and Tyler Florence’s El Paseo in Mill Valley, it was looking to rise above the noise of the explosion of coffee companies in the Bay Area.

To do so, the company founded by Helen Russell and Brook McDonnell doubled down on its roots in Marin, opening up their first retail coffee shop – at the Proof Lab Surf Shop in Tam Junction – and taking over one of the Bay Area's hallowed coffeehouses, the former LaCoppa Coffee space at 12 Miller Ave. in downtown Mill Valley.

As she awaits the green light from City Hall to begin renovating the former LaCoppa space, Russell spoke to Williams-Sonoma, whose stores carry Equator's coffee and which hosts a "Meet the Maker" series on its blog, to discuss Equator's history, its philosophy and her undying love of coffee.

Here's a taste:

Williams-Sonoma: Were you always interested in coffee? What’s the story behind Equator?

Helen Russell: I’ve always been interested in coffee, even since I was a little girl. The first cup I ever had was instant Sanka; my father would let me have some, I’d add cream and sugar, and I thought it was great. We grew up on instant coffee, and I loved the smell of it when he opened the lid.
As for Equator, you could say it was founded by co-founder Brooke McDonnell and me out of a love for the café experience — hanging out in the Castro and North Beach and world travels as a child, soaking in the café life. The actual back of the napkin writing of a business plan took place at a Starbucks in Pioneer Square in downtown Portland, in 1992. Brooke and I sat there musing about the future. I was drinking a mocha and she had her usual double espresso shot. We saw everything that was happening to the Portland coffee scene, and we decided then that we would go back to the Bay Area and start up very our own business. We were flipping houses and working in real estate at the time, but we loved coffee and saw how important the world of specialty coffee was becoming. Then, in 1995, we started roasting in a garage. Brooke wanted it to be a mail order business, but I saw fairly early that we needed to start to selling more coffee to less people – 100 pounds to one person as opposed to one pound to 100 people — or we would starve. So we changed the business to wholesale roasting.

Click here for the full Q&A with Helen Russell, and keep your fingers crossed that Equator gets the green light soon to renovate its space at 2 Miller Ave. and expand its coffee cart into a full-blown cafe!

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Throckmorton Theatre founder Lucy Mercer knew that her decision to create a free weekly concert series as part of her venue's anniversary celebration was a good idea when she saw a busload of residents from the Redwoods arriving one Wednesday afternoon.
Having Redwoods' residents show up in droves for an event isn't a complete anomaly, however, as the senior community's transportation service allows residents to shop, dine, volunteer, keep appointments, and enjoy cultural events seven days a week. 
The Redwoods’ 10th Annual CrabFest Fundraiser – the major fundraiser for that transportation service – is set for Saturday, March 29 at the Mill Valley Community Center. A reception and no-host bar starts at 5 p.m. followed by one dinner seating at 6 p.m. that includes all-you-can-eat fresh Dungeness crab, green salad, pasta, bread and dessert. Dinner tickets for residents are $50 and non-resident tickets are $75.
In addition to the tasty dinner, CrabFest features live bluegrass music from Belle Monroe and Her Brewglass Boys and a performance by Rock the Ages, the popular contemporary rock chorus composed of 25 Redwoods residents.
The Rockin' Raffle Grand Prize is a Holland America Line cruise for two to the Caribbean or Mexico. Silent auction and raffle items include a weekend in Tahoe, theater and symphony tickets, gift certificates, wine, gift baskets, and unique fashion accessories. Raffle tickets are $5 each, five for $20, and can be purchased in advance and up until the drawing at CrabFest. You do not need to be present to win the raffle prizes.
The 411: Click here for more info or to buy tickets, or call Patti Flynn-Boston at 415-383-2741 ext. 295 or email crabfest@theredwoods.org to buy tickets.

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