It was heart-wrenching to read the story: Sara Cole, single mother of four boys, was the victim of
a hit and run drunk driver as she was standing near her vehicle along Blossom Hill Road in Los Gatos a few weeks ago.
The drunk driver was apprehended by a Park Ranger a couple of miles up the road.
Sara's medical expenses are myriad. The community wants to help.
A
fundraising car wash will be held to assist her with medical expenses on Sat/Sun, Oct 13 - 14,
10am - 4pm at Fisher Middle School. The school is located at 19195 Fisher Avenue in Los Gatos. Please stop by!
If you are unavailable those days but would like to help, a fund has been set up to help with the
family's medical expenses. Donations can be mailed to the Sara Cole Fund, P.O. Box 320846, Los Gatos, CA
95032, or to get more information visit www.saracolefund.org.
In early October, we'll get a great breakdown of the September market from various
sources. Retrospect is always 20/20, they say.
But I'm impatient and want to know NOW what's happening. I'm seeing a slowdown in market areas
that were previously fairly robust.
One way of getting a pulse on the market is to check the amount of homes going under contract. So I did a
quick sampling of condos, townhomes, and single family homes that sold (not closed, but went pending) in recent weeks.
Here's what I found:
Aug 30 - Sept 6 (Labor Day timeperiod) - 6 sales (starting inventory of 128)
Sept 7 -13 17 sales (starting inventory of 120)
Sept 14 - 20 16 sales (starting inventory of 115)
Sept 21- 27 12 sales (starting inventory of 125)
Inventory has stayed fairly consistent (bouncing around just a little)
but sales have been dropping in the last three weeks. So yes, the market in Los
Gatos is cooling overall.
A neat place to see graphs and charts on the housing climate is Altos Research. There's a widget on the right margin of
this blog and if you click on it, it will bring you to their website and give more data on the real estate market.
And in a week or so I'll have more data still on our changing housing market here in Los Gatos.
Los Gatos Had a Cross-Dressing Crook Captured in
1895
Thanks to Google Alerts, "Live in Los Gatos" doesn't have an excuse for missing much that comes
online about the Town. This morning I was directed to an article in the San Jose
Mercury News that discussed a bit about life in the 1890s. A photo of women with enormously poofy sleeves was
displayed, along with a discussion about their clothes generally. It wasn't all that interesting.
But...
At the bottom of this article is a section titled "112 Years Ago" and that's where the interesting stuff
was buried.
Apparently Charley Parkhurst (who was a female dressed as a male her whole adult life), a stagecoach
driver discussed in this blog previously in "Surprises of the WIld
West", wasn't the only one back in the wild west days with a secret! Charley Parkhurst, though, was an
honest worker, a teamster who couldn't have worked in her chosen profession without some deception. (She was also
the first woman to vote in the US!)
In the case of Louise Elizabeth Myrtle Blaxland Murton Matson, though, it may have been work that
motivated her, but not honest work. Imagine her jailmates' surprise when she was thrown in with them in January
of 1895 and they realized that the guy passing bad checks on Main Street in Los Gatos was no man at all. Apparently it was
her mother who thought up the idea that if she dressed like a man, she could get away with her crime (what a family!). The
judge must have been baffled as to what to do with this case.
Instead of sentencing her to serve time in the jail (perhaps there were no women's facilities?), he released her with an
order to dress like a woman.
Some would argue, both then and now, that this would be quite punishment enough.
Today the typically pleasant,
normal September weather returned to Los Gatos after several gloomy and unseasonably cold days took hold of us. It was too
nice to stay indoors so in the late afternoon, I grabbed the leash and asked our aging black lab, Bella, if she wanted to
go for a walk.
She limps now, but moves fast at the sound of food or the promise of a walk. We were out the door quickly.
After a stroll down Bacigalupi Drive, greeting neighbors and other dog walkers and pedestrians, we returned home to a
really beautiful site. The moon was just about full and it was almost exactly between two palm trees straight ahead of
me.
Getting Bella inside, I grabbed my Canon Power Shot out of my car and brought it outside, only to find the rechargeable
batteries had died.
Got new ones off the charger and snapped a few shots. They didn't look good in the tiny little window of the camera and I
was afraid that the impact would be lost. I took about a half dozen shots and then the batteries died again. Grrr. But I
got what I needed.
It wasn't until I
uploaded the pics to my computer that I could see if this would work or not. I think it does come across - though still
not as breathtaking as when I saw it "live" today.
Here I think the moon looks so much like a ping pong ball suspended between two palmy paddles.
Right at the border between Los Gatos and Campbell, the
county has an off-leash dog park - did you know? It's located
within the Los Gatos Creek County Park at 1250 Dell Avenue. It
features one fenced area for large dogs and another for small dogs,
plus pet-friendly water fountains and pooper scooper materials
(which are actually available at ALL Los Gatos parks). Call (408)
356-2729 for more information.
My siblings and cousins in
Massachusettes would chide me if I complained about our odd
"winter storm" that blew into Silicon Valley yesterday, in the
middle of what should be our "Indian summer".
But it's a little cold here.
It
was 65 degrees in the Handy house this morning (and in the high
forties outside). The heater had to go on or this blogger wasn't
getting out of bed. The dust burned off and smelled the place up
initially. After flipping the thermostat back onto "sensing
mode", I flipped on the coffee. This time it's Peet's. But when
that's gone I'll be dripping something from Burundi that my
brother got while at a theological conference there a couple of
weeks ago.
In college and grad school
especially, I spent a lot of time at coffeehouses. Some of my
friends today really don't make coffee at home - they always go out
for it. Several Realtor colleagues of mine bring along their laptop
or tablet computers and socialize with the regulars while catching
up on email, or reading news online. For me, visiting a coffeehouse
is a treat.
Last night I was invited to
join the Bay Area Ghost Hunt folks at
Starbucks in Los Gatos at 6:30. Personally, I
prefer mom & pop shops, locally owned ones, but I do love
getting a latte with sugar free hazlenut syrup - yum! That
is also available at Seattle's Best inside of
Border's in Old Town, a bookstore we can't seem to stay away from
for a week at a time.
Independent, Locally Owned Los
Gatos Coffeehouses
But
let's talk locally owned coffee stores. In Portland, where
coffee is as serious as it is in Seattle but chain stores are
shunned, you hear people joke that "friends don't let friends drink
Starbucks". And they mean it! Mom and pop shops all the
way.
So here in town, where do you like to go? Here are my
three favorite ones:
Yogurt Delite has a name that does not imply
coffee and breakfast munchies, but it does provide those along with
free wireless internet. It is a smaller shop than my other two
favorites, so if you are looking for a quiet place to enjoy your
cuppa joe, this is it. Parking is easy as it's close to Safeway and
Petco.
Great Bear has cool art, both mural art and local
framed art on display. (No, the art isn't all good, but it is
all interesting.) It's a larger shop and centrally located in the
"main drag" area. Parking is not hard on N. Santa Cruz in the
morning (afternoons are another matter) but there's also a parking
lot in back, off Main Street.
The Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company really does
roast its own coffee - you can smell it. It is the largest of my
three favorite coffee places in town, with tons of seats. If you
live in town and are at all involved, it's impossible to go there
and not know or at least recognize someone. But parking
can be an issue in this congested part of town. It's easiest to
stop in there if you're doing several store visits in the area, or
if you can arrive on foot or bike. It's not too far from the Los
Gatos Creek Trail so many patrons here seem to be motor-vehicle
free.
As for me, my kids have just left
for school and my mug has managed to get empty. Time to fill 'er
up. And maybe today I will swing by one of my favorite coffee
houses for a little decaf. Actually, I had some serious insomnia
last night. Maybe it will be regular.
Remodeling
can be minor or it can be complete, so much so that you really have
to move out of your home to live in it.
Ever wonder how you could figure out whether you should sell and
move or stay and remodel? A neat website with tools to help you
evaluate this specific choice is www.RemodelOrMove.com. Check it
out!
A blog about Los Gatos real estate, homes, houses, condos, townhomes, housing market, neightborhoods, history, events, businesses, parks, schools, photos, issues, and lifestyle.
Mary Pope-Handy
Realtor, CRS, ABR, SRES, E-PRO
Luxor Real Estate Group
Mailing Address for Mary: PO Box 440 Los Gatos, CA 95031-0440
877 397-5391 (office/toll-free)
A
fundraising car wash will be held to assist her with medical expenses on Sat/Sun, Oct 13 - 14,
10am - 4pm at Fisher Middle School. The school is located at 19195 Fisher Avenue in Los Gatos. Please stop by!
Today the typically pleasant,
normal September weather returned to Los Gatos after several gloomy and unseasonably cold days took hold of us. It was too
nice to stay indoors so in the late afternoon, I grabbed the leash and asked our aging black lab, Bella, if she wanted to
go for a walk.
It wasn't until I
uploaded the pics to my computer that I could see if this would work or not. I think it does come across - though still
not as breathtaking as when I saw it "live" today.
Right at the border between Los Gatos and Campbell, the
county has an off-leash dog park - did you know? It's located
within the Los Gatos Creek County Park at 1250 Dell Avenue. It
features one fenced area for large dogs and another for small dogs,
plus pet-friendly water fountains and pooper scooper materials
(which are actually available at ALL Los Gatos parks). Call (408)
356-2729 for more information.
It
was 65 degrees in the Handy house this morning (and in the high
forties outside). The heater had to go on or this blogger wasn't
getting out of bed. The dust burned off and smelled the place up
initially. After flipping the thermostat back onto "sensing
mode", I flipped on the coffee. This time it's Peet's. But when
that's gone I'll be dripping something from Burundi that my
brother got while at a theological conference there a couple of
weeks ago.
But
let's talk locally owned coffee stores. In Portland, where
coffee is as serious as it is in Seattle but chain stores are
shunned, you hear people joke that "friends don't let friends drink
Starbucks". And they mean it! Mom and pop shops all the
way..jpg)
Remodeling
can be minor or it can be complete, so much so that you really have
to move out of your home to live in it.
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