From being named one of America's 20 best small towns by Smithsonian Magazine to more recent love from Conde Nast Traveler, Mill Valley has been on the receiving end of plenty of compliments over the years. But the latest attention to come our way – the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee's "50 Perfect Hours in Mill Valley" – might just make us blush.

Here's the lowdown: The 50th edition of the Super Bowl, the National Football League's championship game and the biggest sporting event in America, is set for February 7, 2016 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. The Super Bowl 50 Host Committee, which is raising the money to put on the Super Bowl and managing all of its planning and production, is celebrating some of the top destination towns and cities in the Bay Area, hoping to get attendees of the big game to spend extra time here before and after.

The committee tasked San Francisco writer Katie Morell with creating digests for a series called "50 Perfect Hours." To date, she's highlighted places like Palo Alto, Pebble Beach, Napa Valley and Walnut Creek. In her story, which has since been picked up 7x7 Magazine, Morell describes Mill Valley as "an idyllic town of 14,000 residents with tons of green spaces and leafy downtown streets filled with one-of-a-kind shops, art galleries and restaurants perfect for strolling at any time of day.... Mill Valley is a magnet for tourists from around the world, many of whom want to move immediately following a visit."

Morell's "perfect way to spend a 50-hour getaway in Mill Valley" begins at the Mill Valley Inn downtown, waking to its delicious complimentary breakfast before heading to the Depot Bookstore & Café before browsing shops like OSKA and and Summer House.

A bike ride around the lower slopes of Mount Tam follows, before a respite and dinner at El Paseo – A Marin Chophouse and some live music at Sweetwater Music Hall. The following day begins with grabbing a picnic lunch at Mill Valley Market and heading off to Muir Woods National Monument and Mount Tam State Park. Morell recommends moving over to the Mountain Home Inn – "a secluded hideaway perched within Mt. Tam" – for the next night. End your Perfect 50 Hours in Mill Valley by rising early to see the sunrise from the balcony before dashing off.

What do you think of "50 Perfect Hours in Mill Valley"? What would you have added? Tell us in the Comments below!

On October 1, the nearly 4,500-square-foot space at 250 East Blithedale Ave. won’t house a printing shop for the first time in nearly 35 years. 

Mill Valley Services, the print shop owned by Lagunitas resident Dave Semling for the past 25 years, and the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Business of the Year in 1998 – is shutting down on Tuesday, September 30. The space was home to Mill Valley Printing for nearly a decade before Semling bought it after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

“It was a business that was just too far under water,” Semling says of the reason to shut down. “We’ve had an unbelievably great run here for the first 20 years. We have been so fortunate here in this community – we’ve worked with some of the greatest people you could possibly wish for.”

The property at the corner of East Blithedale and Sycamore avenues, which also includes Tony Tutto Pizza and a warehouse leased by SummerHouse, was sold in 2013 to San Francisco-based Worldco Company, a real estate firm run by Tony and Alvin Chan. Through MacCracken Architects, the new owners have proposed to redevelop the property, demolishing the 1,000-square-foot building that houses Tony Tutto Pizza and remodeling the 9,300-square-foot structure that contains Mill Valley Services and the SummerHouse space. 

The Planning Commission held study sessions on the proposal in November 2013 and again in March 2014. It is expected to hold a public hearing on the proposal in the coming months.

Semling says Mill Valley Services had been struggling financially for many years, first with the economic recession that began in 2008, which saw his business dip by at least 25 percent.

And then the rapid pace at which the printing business has been changing over the past decade made it difficult to take advantage of the economic recovery that followed, Semling says. He says he spent more than $1 million on digital printing equipment over the past five years, taking out lines of credit and using credit cards in the hopes that the business could survive. "But we just kept losing money," he says.

The industry’s technological changes have made it such that a business like his could buy the latest innovative printing equipment and see it become nearly obsolete just a few years later.

Couple that with national Internet-based competitors who can easily compete on price with local and regional independent businesses like his, and Semling says he was looking at a Sisyphean task.

He’s spent the past few weeks readying the transition, helping his nine employees figure out their next steps and having digital files transferred to Strahm Communications in San Rafael, a larger outfit that has already brought on one Semling’s employees.

“The printing businesses that are becoming something to everybody – those are the ones that will survive,” Semling says.

In addition to smoothing the transition as much as possible for employees and his longtime clients, the 75-year-old Semling has been planning for the next chapter of life with his wife Janet. They have to sell their home in Lagunitas in order to pay for their retirement.

“We have less objects around us, but our family is very close, so we’ll be fine,” Semling says, noting that two of his three daughters live in the area.

The venue where the late comedian made so many people laugh for so many years becomes a place for locals and visitors to remember him and pay tribute.

We’ve had more than a week to chew and stew on the San Francisco Chronicle’s July 12 piece on our little town, “Are tech-sector newcomers elbowing out Mill Valley’s funky-arty vibe?” And after a deluge of reaction on social media and in the comments section of the article itself (450 comments and counting), we want to hear what you think about it.

Did the story get it right? Is the tech industry specifically changing Mill Valley? It seems "Mill Valley is changing for the worse" has been the theory du jour in town for years, if not decades. Is the Chronicle onto something new and different this time around?

As we see it, there’s no doubt that Mill Valley faces some huge challenges, namely in the way of traffic, housing affordability and school district enrollment. And we’re really glad the writer spoke to the likes of Mayor Stephanie Moulton-Peters and local business owners Will Hutchinson (Prooflab) and Susan Griffin-Black (EO Products) – they all provided some good context and, in Susan’s case, some Seinfeld-inspired levity.

But we were left feeling a bit underwhelmed by the piece, particularly from a “How is this really news?” perspective. Demographic changes have been occurring in the 94941 for decades – “new money” has been coming here for so long that it’s now long since “old money.” The median single-family home price in Mill Valley in April 2014 was $1.83 million, and it was nearly $1.5 million for the same month 10 years ago. And while traffic has indeed spiked in recent months, the connection of the dots between gridlock and the latest tech boom seem tenuous at best.

We would’ve loved to read a single quote from or an anecdote about a “tech-sector newcomer” who recently moved to town, or at least more than a mention of a “former venture capitalist” who was once a contestant on “ABC’s “Wife Swap.” It would’ve been nice if the premise of the article – the tech industry’s boom specifically changing Mill Valley – was supported by some evidence other than somebody who saw someone flying a consumer drone. Right?

A few other minor points of contention:

• Mickey McGowan closed his Unknown Museum in 1989, having been initially been displaced by Smith & Hawken, the gardening store that was born in Mill Valley and which shut down in 2009. You can’t blame Twitter and Facebook money for the loss – 25 years ago – of a quirky cultural institution.
• Charlie Deal, creator of the toilet-seat guitar, passed away in 2007. Not sure that occurrence can be laid at the feet of the tech industry.
• Ditto with the original Sweetwater, which closed in 2007.
• And what does a guy from Kentfield badly beating someone up while riding his bike through town have to do with Mill Valley?
  

Hutchinson perhaps said it best: “I think that the tech boom that's happening in San Francisco sends waves out in every direction, so it's impossible not to be affected by that.”

The impact of the latest tech boom is being felt virtually everywhere in the Bay Area. Mill Valley is not immune to that, better or worse. The only thing that feels unique about its impact on Mill Valley is that the history of the 94941 is more colorful and interesting than many of its counterparts.

What did you think of the Chronicle story? Tell us in the Comments below.

Equator Coffee & Teas, which has made Mill Valley the centerpiece of its foray into cafes and retail shops, has signed the lease on the company's first San Francisco café. The café is expected to open in the fall at 986 Market Street, between Fifth and Sixth streets, adjacent to Lowes Warfield—an historic space with roots as a vaudeville theater, and later as the iconic venue for acts such as Bob Dylan, The Clash, and Louis Armstrong.

Equator is working with the award-winning firm Boor Bridges Architecture to design a space that is as much rooted in the area's history as it is in the company's modern approach to coffee. The firm will blend a sleek and modern look with the building's rich history, integrating state-of-the-art brewing technology and outdoor seating.

The café will be Equator's third, after Proof Lab Surf Shop and the long-awaited café at 2 Miller Avenue in downtown Mill Valley, which is expected to open in late August.

Equator CEO Helen Russell said the decision to open in San Francisco's burgeoning Mid-Market corridor is inspired by the company's own origins as well as the area's dynamic, blossoming culture. 

"The confluence of art, technology and start-ups in Mid-Market makes it dynamic and attractive to us,” she says. “We want to be in the mix. There is such a vibrant culture in San Francisco and we are circling back to our roots in coffee where we started 20 years ago with a coffee kiosk at 60 Spear Street.”

Equator launched in a garage in Corte Madera in 1995, later moving into a 5,400-square-foot warehouse near Davidson Middle School in San Rafael. The company has been primarily wholesale, with more than 250 customers that include chef Thomas Keller’s French Laundry and Tyler Florence’s El Paseo in Mill Valley. For the fast few years they’ve also been operating in San Francisco International Airport’s Terminal 2 at Napa Farms, which features other sustainable purveyors from Marin and the North Bay.

Russell says that Equator continues to make progress on its café at 2 Miller, which faced a number of permitting delays but is now projected to open in late August. 

From world famous musicians at the heart of the Bay Area music scene to the workers who serve as the backbone of Mill Valley at businesses like the Mill Valley Market, longtime local resident documented the famous and the overlooked. 

Longtime Mill Valley resident Suki Hill, whose photographic talent and passion spanned from the biggest names in rock 'n' roll to the the oft-overlooked workers who serve as the backbone of Mill Valley, died on June 14. Hill was 72.

"It was really beautiful the way she passed on," said Charles Keppel, her neighbor and caretaker in recent months. "She was surrounded by her son, daughter, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. You couldn't have asked for her to go in a more peaceful way."

Hill, a 2007 recipient of a Milley Award, made a name for herself in the 1960s and 1970s as one of the pre-eminent photographers of the thriving Bay Area music scene, snapping classic shots of the likes of Crosby, Stills & Nash, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. She was equally prolific later in life, publishing in 2007 "Mill Valley: Then & Now," which contrasted early images throughout Mill Valley with her own modern photos of the same places.

In 2011, she created the "Mill Valley at Work" exhibit that featured workers at places like the Mill Valley Market, whose employees Hill said were "like family to me."

“She’s a sweetheart lady and she takes beautiful photos,” Mill Valley Market co-owner Doug Canepa said when Hill unveiled her exhibit with a series of vinyl banners on the side of the Throckmorton Theatre. “She really knows how to capture the heart and soul of people.”

Here is an obituary submitted by her family:

For 50 years, Suki T. Hill’s photographs documented the world’s musicians and her Mill Valley neighbors. Her book, “Mill Valley, Then and Now,” celebrated the latter (and their forbears). 

Suki spent the night of June 13 at home with her brother Ted, her daughter Abigail, her son Zachary, her daughter-in-law Sara, Abigail’s partner Laura, her grandkids Lyla and Giovani, and the man she described as her “stalwart of stalwarts" Charles Keppel. On Saturday morning, 12 days shy of her 73rd birthday, she died peacefully, surrounded by Abby, Zack, Sara and her beloved grandchildren.
​
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Suki moved to Mill Valley in 1965 after earning a Masters Degree in Philosophy from the University of California. Earlier she earned a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence. She always said it was her fellow members of the Muir Woods Park Improvement Association – ardent hikers all – who re-awakened her muse. Soon her photographs appeared on album covers, posters, magazine and newspaper articles and fashion ads, and, in time, art exhibits. ​
 
Suki was also a portrait photographer who captured her subjects’ character in a way that prompted them to smile and say, “you got me.” Music to her ears and this was a source of many clients in her later years. In fact, she continued to create discerning photographic portraits even after she was diagnosed with the cancers that caused her death.

Her daughter and son plan to host a memorial service in mid-July. Those who think they might like to attend should email Zachary Hill at zackhill@mac.com or Abby Hill at abbyhh@gmail.com for date, time and place.  They ask that those who wish to make a memorial contribution direct it to St. Vincent’s in San Rafael.

A lifelong friend sums up what a lot of people's experience may have been with Suki, "You have been an angel in my life, a driving spirit. Made me stronger, made me believe in magic, bliss and encouraged a constant sense of wonderment in the world, arts, creating and being surrounded by beauty and beautiful kind people.
 
"We love you madly Suki!  You will be missed dearly!

In March, KQED dubbed Mark Pitta & Friends Tuesday Night Comedy the genre’s “Worst-Kept Secret.”

For Mill Valley residents who love to laugh but perhaps have been living under a rock for the better part of the past decade since Pitta created the show, yet another reminder of just how much of a comedic gem we have in our backyard came earlier this week.

Local legend Dana Carvey stopped by on Tuesday to try out some new material for an upcoming appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. But while Carvey was excellent, rattling off a host of spot-on impressions and riffing on too-close-to-home topics like the plastic bag ban and socially conscious solicitors outside cafes, the brilliance of what Pitta and Throckmorton Theatre founder Lucy Mercer have built is evident not just in the serendipity of the nights when a local mega-stars like Carvey or Robin Williams pop in, but with the consistent depth of the entire roster of comics that perform there every Tuesday night.

Take Adam Pearlstein, a 25-year-old, relatively unknown Bay Area comic who performed right before Carvey. Pearlstein seemed nervous and was really casual in his delivery, so much so that the comedic weight of his punchlines clearly caught the audience off guard a few times.

In between hilarious bits on the dietary preferences of health-conscious Bay Area residents during the zombie apocalypse and how he’s anti-war because it would mean less homework, he casually mentioned the envious feedback he receives when people hear that he’s a comedian. “They say, ‘In what other job can you just sit in a room and laugh all day long?’ I don’t know…maybe being the CEO of an oil company, or the head of Goldman Sachs.” Mixed among the uproarious laughter were plenty of “I did NOT see that coming” guffaws.

Working off a pile of notes, Carvey was fantastic, reminding the packed house of his seemingly limitless library of impressions, from the famous – Cary Grant, Johnny Carson, Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine as God – to the not-so-famous: saying he “enjoyed the social dynamic of the pharmacy," Carvey impersonated a drug-addled pharmacist calling out people’s orders of three prescription drugs apiece, each one more outrageously funny than the last. An order for Zoloft, Immodium and Ambien was for “a nutball with diarrhea who can’t sleep.”

“There have been so many nights where I go, ‘Wow, that’s the most connected I’ve ever felt to myself as a stand up – where the critical voice is completely silent,” Carvey told KQED.

Mercer spelled out one of the secrets to the weekly event’s success: allowing big names and no names to mix, all in celebration of, and respect for, the art of comedy.

“Top names as well as up and coming names – they’re all aspiring on stage,” Mercer said. “You can command an audience of thousands at a high ticket values, but where do you get to try? If you’re a creative individual, where do you get to try out the material?”

On Tuesday nights at the Throckmorton Theatre – that’s where.

For those that haven’t seen the excellent KQED piece on Mark Pitta & Friends Tuesday Night Comedy, view it in its entirety below. 

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Spiritually inspired, with an independent streak.

Those are the prevailing traits among the 190 people and 20 organizations profiled in Legendary Locals of Mill Valley, local author Joyce Kleiner’s tome for Arcadia Publishing, the firm best known for publishing local history books like Claudine Chalmers’ Images of America: Early Mill Valley and Suki Hill’s Then and Now: Mill Valley.

Across its 127 pages, Legendary Locals covers a remarkable amount of ground, with Kleiner, best known locally as a former member of the Mill Valley Parks & Recreation Commission and as the longtime “Civics Lessons” columnist for the Mill Valley Herald. She does so by grouping the book into seven chapters, including "Visionaries and Quiet Champions," ""Bohemia in the Redwoods" and "Foundations and Footraces." 

Kleiner is holding her official book release party on Thursday, May 29 at the Depot Bookstore & Café at 7:30 p.m., followed by a book signing. She has a host of other events in June, including presentation for the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Rotary Club.

Here's our Q&A with Kleiner:

Enjoy Mill Valley: Where are you from originally, and what brought you to Mill Valley? 
Joyce Kleiner: I’m originally from Burlingame, which is south of here, on the Peninsula; I grew up in the house my grandfather built. By the way, that grandfather ran in the first Dipsea Race in 1905. I’ve been married to the same man, Robert, for nearly 25 years. We have one son, Jake, who recently graduated from college and is working in San Francisco as a biochemistry research associate.
We moved to Mill Valley from Potrero Hill in San Francisco when Jake was four (1995). We wanted to live in a greener, more open environment, with a yard and more access to nature. We settled on Mill Valley pretty quickly. Robert and I already knew it very well.

EMV: How about your professional background?
JK: My professional background is a real mixture: I traveled through Spain with a theater company of Hair, I worked as a Pan Am flight attendant for eight years, and I did wine marketing and sales in San Francisco until my son came along. After that I pretty much became a full-time parent volunteer: Co-op preschool, PTA, school site council and so on. Around 2004, I began to give more time to civic causes and committees, including a term on the Mill Valley Parks & Recreation Commission. The City Council appointed me to a second term, but I had to retire early because I went to graduate school for an MFA in creative writing in 2007, as the class schedule conflicted with the commission’s meeting schedule.  In 2007, I began writing a column for the Mill Valley Herald called “Civics Lessons.” I stopped writing the column in 2013, not long before I began working on the book. I’ve also contributed articles to the Mill Valley Historical Society magazine Review for the past two years.

EMV: What do you love most about Mill Valley?
JK: There are so many things I love about it. Obviously, the access to nature and the spectacular green belt that surrounds the town are wonderful. I love that Mill Valley backs up to a national park, meaning we’ll always have a lot of open space just outside our front door.
But what I have come to really appreciate in researching this book is the strong sense of community and roots that Mill Valley has. There are so many multi-generational families living here, and they keep the “narrative” and the traditions of the town alive.

EMV: Mill Valley has changed, for both good and bad, over the years. What do you miss, and what don't you miss, about the way things used to be here?
JK: Change is inevitable, and even though I’ve done a great deal of writing about Mill Valley’s past, I’m not really one for nostalgia. I think that there are many people committed to protecting what makes Mill Valley unique, and I trust them to ensure that the things that are most valuable about Mill Valley endure.
When we moved here, Mill Valley was already an expensive place to buy a home, but there was still some economic diversity. I haven’t lived here long enough to experience the biggest changes, but I am very sad to see our affordable housing options shrink.  So I guess you could say I miss that. It’s harder and harder for Mill Valley’s artists and musicians to remain here, and that’s a real loss.
I wasn’t living here before 1982, but if I had been, I wouldn’t miss the big Greyhound parking lot that used to take up the entire area that is now our Depot Plaza.

EMV: What is the origin of this book? How did you conceive of it? How long ago did you begin thinking about it?
JK: I was very, very lucky. Arcadia Publishing approached me to write this book; they sought me out because of my column. So I didn’t really think about it in advance at all. I had been carrying around lots of thoughts about Mill Valley’s story since I had begun writing the column, though, and ironically I had been wondering if I could write a book about the town. 
Legendary Locals of Mill Valley is a sort of “sampler” of the people who have made Mill Valley what it is. The stories go all the way back to the beginning, and come up to the present day.

EMV: How long did it take to complete the book? What was that process like in terms of how you went about researching interviewing subjects?
JK: From the day I turned in the signed contract to the deadline for turning in the completed manuscript was exactly 8 months. Also, on the day I signed the contract I broke my foot, so I did the first two months of interviews with a cast on my foot and leg. There are a lot of people that live up steep hills or at the bottom of long stairways in Mill Valley!
Arcadia had a very specific number of pages they allotted for the book, with a minimum and maximum number of subjects I could include. So I had parameters that I had to keep in mind all the time. That may have been a blessing in disguise, because I ran across so many fascinating stories that I would never have finished the book if I tried to include them all.
There were certain people I knew, right from the start, that I would include: Some of the town founders and earliest residents, of course, and from more recent times I wanted to include Rita Abrams, Charlie Deal, John Goddard, the Canepa family, and others who we’ve all heard of. I set up interviews with those people, or people who knew them, right away. I also spent a lot of time in all of Marin’s history rooms, tracking down older information. 
Then I went about interviewing people who knew Mill Valley’s story, or an important part of Mill Valley’s story, to get an idea of who else should be included. I spent a lot of time in people’s homes, interviewing them and going through photo albums. I think I figured out that I interviewed at least 100 people. This book also has a photo for every subject, so I had to find, or take, a picture for every person I wrote about.

EMV: What were the criteria for choosing your subjects?
JK: The publisher wanted this book to focus on individual people who had an interesting or touching story, and so I looked for those kind of unique tales. But I also wanted the book to show Mill Valley over the generations, and to try to tell a longer, fuller narrative. So I also looked for people who represented what I considered important moments or elements from Mill Valley’s chronicle. There is one story, for example, about a couple that most people probably have never heard of, Frank and Fran Dittle. They were married before World War II, and lived all their lives in the same house, which Frank had help build when he was a boy. Their story represents a noteworthy change that happened in Mill Valley after World War II.
I also was looking for people who had made a considerable impact either on Mill Valley (people like Dick Jessup and Lucy Mercer) or on the greater world from their Mill Valley base (like Phyllis Faber and Peter Behr).
I wasn’t as interested in including all the famous people who live here, just because they are famous. There had to be more to it. That’s why I included Sammy Hagar and Peter Coyote, for example. They have had a significant influence on Mill Valley, and have both given back a lot to the town.

EMV: In looking at the final group of subjects, what do they – the fact that these people in particular have had such an impact on this town – collectively say about Mill Valley as a place?
JK: After about two months into the interview process I began to see a recurring theme: The people who I wrote about considered Mill Valley exceptional and beautiful and inspiring; some would say spiritually inspiring. There is a kind of old-fashioned “New England-like” community identity here, too. And yet, individually, I kept seeing an independent streak.  There is a theme of non-conformity to Mill Valley’s story; even going back as far as Laura White and the Outdoor Art Club. She really was before her time in many ways.  
And every neighborhood has its own specific personality. Longtime Mill Valleyans feel a real connection with their neighborhoods and their neighbors. I was very surprised to find out just how much of Mill Valley I had never seen before.  There are so many absolutely wonderful little cul-de-sacs of 100-year-old cottages up in the hills that feel like summer camps, and little pocket parks all over the place that add so much to the charm of the town. This is “Greater Mill Valley” I’m talking about, the whole 94941 area code.
I would say I learned that Mill Valley, as a place, inspires with its beauty, and encourages both community and non-conformity, in equal measures.

The 411: For more info and to buy Joyce Kleiner's Legendary Locals of Mill Valley, visit the book's website or Facebook page. Click here to see the list of events to promote the book, and go here to see those events in the Enjoy Mill Valley calendar.

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On a Thursday afternoon in downtown Mill Valley, a tiny office space was buzzing with the youthful energy of a startup.

Programmers sat at nearly a dozen computers in the 400-square-foot room, and one was working with Arduino, a micro-controller intended to make the application of interactive objects more accessible. In the corner of the room, a Makerbot Replicator, a 3D printer that can create a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model, was humming to life.

But this office tucked into the back of the building that houses the Balboa Café wasn’t a VC-funded startup spawning in the 94941 – the programmers were all of elementary school age, and they were all girls. They were immersed in a variety of games and programs like Code Combat that help them understand things like Javascript programming and develop problem-solving skills.

This is the Mill Valley Code Club, a relatively new project that technology industry veteran Douglas Tarr founded last fall to spread the love and the skills of computer programming to his kids and their friends. The Thursday afternoon session is girls-only, and the Club overall has since ballooned to 100 kids, and along with popular programs from fellow local outfit MV Gate and activities at the Middle School, coding programs for youth are downright surging in Mill Valley.

“It’s a new literacy to me,” Tarr says, noting that the Club is “absolutely not” about setting kids on a career path. “It’s important for every kid to be able to navigate around a computer and to get them to do what you want. These kids are trying to express themselves – coding helps them do that. They can be creative on the computer – and they can really learn math and science as well.”

Tarr has been in the technology business for 20 years, having worked for and consulted with the likes of Levi Strauss, JPMorganChase and Payscale, the latter of which is a compensation website he founded and served as the vice president of programming for more than a decade.

He and his wife J’Amy, a Mill Valley native and fashion and textile designer, moved back to Mill Valley two years ago after stints in both Seattle, New York City and San Francisco.

He began the Club out of his house with a couple kids, including his 9-year-old son and some of his son’s friends from his Mill Valley Soccer Club team. Tarr’s kids have been playing on computer for several years, both because they seemed interested and because of his own level of interest and the fact that they were so central to his work.

“I hadn’t intended to do this,” Tarr says. “Parents were asking me if there was anywhere to teach your kid to code. It just kind of evolved from there.”

The Club moved into 38 Miller Ave., Suite 9 in January, and just five months later, with 100 kids from first through ninth grade spending time at the Club, Tarr is already thinking he might need more space.

Tarr structures the Club as a monthly program – parents buy a certain number of hours in six-hour increments per month – and the kids have a variety of things to choose to do and work on when they show up. He strives to maintain a ratio of about 3 kids to each instructor each day, and currently has two full-time employees and a few part-time instructors.

“That’s very important to the program,” he says. “When you’re trying to teach something like coding, it’s very challenging at first. So we’ll be keeping that ratio very low.”

He estimates that of the approximately 100 kids coming to the Club, about 40 percent are middle school students, 40 percent are between third and fifth grade and the rest are first and second graders, with students coming from as far as Fairfax, Corte Madera, Tiburon and Sausalito.

Linda Moll, whose daughters Abby, a fifth grader, and Hailey, a third grader, both at Strawberry Point School, are weekly Code Club attendees, says she couldn’t be happier with the Club.

“The things they can do are mind-boggling,” she says. “When you look at what they’ve done – creating, problem-solving and thinking through the end results – what they want and how they’re going to get there, it’s amazing.”

Moll sits on the board of the Strawberry Point PTA, and is involved regularly in conversations about technology as part of the curriculum.

“For me, this was a no brainer,” she says. “It’s not inexpensive, but this is money well spent.”

Mill Valley School District Superintendent Paul Johnson says he fully supports coding activities for students. MV Gate, which was founded by Mill Valley residents John Pearce and Jeff Leane, held an “Hour of Code” night last December at Old Mill School, drawing more than 200 students, Johnson said. The event was part of a global Hour of Code campaign, introduced by Code.org, a group backed by the tech industry that offers free curriculums. The campaign featured videos by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and President Obama - who urged kids, "Don't just buy a new video game, make one. Don't just download the latest app, help design it."

MV Gate also hosts CodeKids, after-school programs held at three of the district’s five elementary schools.

“It is an activity that prepares students for the 21st Century technological world we live in,” says Johnson, who notes that sixth graders at the Middle School have been working with Scratch. “Most importantly, students that participate are highly motivated and engaged in learning.  These after-school activities that have been popular with students and families, and we’re appreciative of their efforts and feel this has benefited many district students and families.”

The New York Times reported that since December, 20,000 teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade have introduced coding lessons, according to Code.org. In addition, some 30 school districts, including New York City and Chicago, have agreed to add coding classes in the fall, mainly in high schools but in lower grades, too.

The surge in coding instruction for kids is “unprecedented — there’s never been a move this fast in education,” Elliot Soloway, a professor of education and computer science at the University of Michigan, told the Times. 

Tarr agrees.

“I had no idea the Club would be as popular as it’s been,” he says. “There’s much more demand than there is supply. We’re creating a really exciting space for kids, where they can come and be excited and be exposed to all these different things – and it couldn’t be more relevant than it is today.” 

The 411: The Mill Valley Code Club is at 38 Miller Ave., Suite 9. 

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