“These communities were established on the Mid-Coast between 1906 and 1909 during the real estate boom that followed the construction of the Ocean Shore Railroad. Speculators quickly subdivided the lands along the new rail line, expecting a real estate boom to follow in its tracks. This never took place. Few of the subdivided lots were developed during the first half of this century.
“By 1950, the Mid-Coast population was only 1,700 residents. During the next two decades, however, the population more than doubled to 4,000.
“As buildable land on the Bayside disappeared, many contractors discovered the abundance of vacant subdivided lots in the community. A small building boom resulted and by 1979 over 6,500 persons resided in the area.
If you thought the justices at the Supreme Court were brilliant…thoughtful….wise…
Uh-Uh
They’re just like everybody else, only much worse.
“The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court” by Jeffrey Toobin. Author Toobin is a legal analyst for the “New Yorker” magazine.
Prepared to be enlightened…..and……depressed– sorry to say.
Please try to buy some stuff local: May I suggest Bay Book, Coastside Books or Moon News Bookstore, all in Half Moon Bay. There’s also a used book store on Main Street.
It wasn’t exactly a “Black Friday” but it was a bustling Saturday after Thanksgiving on Main Street in Half Moon Bay. The African gallery called Sujaro– where a herd of giraffes (each one unique, carved out of a whole piece of mahogany– in Kenya)– caught my eye. Manager Ethan Rider told me that customers usually buy only one of these gorgeous wooden creatures–but I could see a dozen of them gracing a big room.
(Photo: Sujaro Manager Ethan Rider poses with the giraffes.)
Sujaro: 424 Main St., Half Moon Bay. Across the street from the famous San Benito House.
Richard Scranton, known to some of his music-making acquaintances as Johann Sebastian Scranton, lived in a little green house in Montara with a sign over the door: “Cold Comfort Farm�?.
Richard’s ultimate desire was to hand-copy and arrange all 371 of Johann Sebastian Bach’s harmonized chorales so that they could be played on the keyboard. Before Richard died at the age of 75 in 2004, he managed to complete this enormous effort. He called his handwritten manuscript the Ill-Tempered Clavier, a takeoff on Bach’s encyclopedic work, The Well-Tempered Clavier.
In the front room of Richard’s house on George Street was an instrument which resembled an 18th-century harpsichord, but which on closer inspection proved to be two modern keyboard synthesizers set into a
harpsichord case so cleverly covered with wood-grain paper that it truly fooled the eye.
Richard made digital recordings of his self-taught keyboard playing on this wonderful machine, sometimes painstakingly inputting the chorales note by note and editing out his mistakes.
The floor of “Cold Comfort Farm” was carpeted wall- to- wall with shag scraps cut and glued in a checkerboard pattern, and the walls were densely hung with Richard’s own skillfully-painted facsimiles of European and Asian masterpieces. He made his own curtains and upholstered his own furniture. It was not cold in Richard’s house: Through an innovation best left unexamined, he kept the temperature at about 78 degrees year round.
“Cold Comfort Farm�?, an expression from Shakespeare, was the title of a comic novel by Stella Gibbons published in 1932. The book, set in the fictitious village of Howling, Sussex, was made into a film by the BBC in 1995.
Richard Scranton’s past was mysterious. He had a mother somewhere, but had no contact with her. He had a cat, but she died. At some point he had been a barber and trusted no one else to cut his hair, which finally he shaved off. He had traveled to Europe. He had a library-class record collection and knew everything worth knowing about all kinds of music. He had been a custodian at a local school for a while.
Although he was gentlemanly and courteous to his neighbors, he preferred to be alone most of the time. He cooked for himself in an electric skillet. He
sometimes rode a motorcycle or a bicycle, but did not drive a car.
In late summer of 2004, his neighbors and a handful of acquaintances held a musical memorial service for Richard at Cold Comfort Farm. The building is now used as a studio by the owners, who live next door.
