We rule followers have had it relatively easy this pandemic. We’ve waited, breathlessly, for the next opportunity to do the right thing by staying inside, wearing a mask and getting vaccinated. The next point of order, it may seem, would be to line up dutifully for our booster shots on the m…
At last check, just over half of Americans are vaccinated against the potentially lethal effects of COVID-19. The numbers are better for California (about 60 percent) and much better in San Mateo County, where 80 percent of people over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated with one of three vac…
If not for deadly wildfires blackening some of California’s most beloved landscapes and a novel coronavirus still coursing through our communities, the state’s top existential challenge would be housing. Specifically, how to build more of it.
Keith Mangold is a man on a mission to save El Granada from wildfires no one thought possible when he moved to town nearly 40 years ago. In fact, few contemplated unchecked fire burning through the canopy of eucalyptus even five years ago. Yet today everyone acknowledges the danger, even as …
The city of Half Moon Bay is in the process of planning for a corporation yard at the end of Stone Pine Road. Actually, it already exists and you can catch glimpses of it as you travel in and out of town on Highway 92. At the moment, it consists of an old ranch house and some storage contain…
More than 78 percent of the credentialed staff at Cabrillo Unified School District is white. Less than 15 percent of staff is Latino. There are no Black teachers. Meanwhile, only 41 percent of the student body is Caucasian. The majority of students are Latino with a sprinkling of every other…
Updated: 9:00am, August 11, 2021.
By now, conquering seemingly unconquerable medical challenges by realizing the promise of technology might seem like old hat to Coastsider Gary Selnow. After all, he’s aided doctors in war-torn regions like Iraq and Kosovo and brought medical miracles to remote parts of the Amazon. But even …
People often say that their loved ones don’t really die, that they live on in our hearts, that their spirits continue to guide us forever. Friends and family of Ken Paul Lozada, who died at the age of 89 last month in Half Moon Bay, aren’t merely mouthing such spirituality expected in grief,…
A couple years ago, wise leaders of the Granada Community Services District voted to help skateboarders move their unregulated (and thoroughly awesome) jetty ramp from Caltrans right of way onto district property on the Burnham Strip. In so doing, the district earned a lot of goodwill and di…
Young people who play organized sports are healthier, all things considered, than their more sedentary peers. They form lasting friendships and learn to deal with adversity in productive ways. They become time management experts out of necessity. Young athletes build confidence and good habi…
There are times when government largess is appropriate. In the midst of a life-threatening pandemic, when millions of Americans are put out of work without warning, programs like the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which distributed $800 billion to nearly a million American businesses, …
When California extended the state’s eviction moratorium through September, lawmakers were acknowledging both process problems getting federal money where it’s needed as well as the scope of an economic problem that is both personal and societal.
Many of us were taught that America gained its independence on July 4, 1776. That is the day delegates from the 13 original Colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with …
Ready or not, California is open once more.
June is Pride Month, and CoastPride kicked it off in a big way on June 1 with the grand opening and official ribbon-cutting of its new community center in downtown Half Moon Bay.
With dozens of special districts, boards and committees stretching from Pacifica to Pescadero, there’s no shortage of ways to get involved in local government. But the same handful of people tend to show up to meetings to advocate for or against the issues of the day. The biggest decisions a…
Remember when it was nearly impossible to get a COVID-19 test, let alone a vaccine? Just weeks ago, it was a mad dash. Now, they’re in every local pharmacy and will even be offered at the county fair.
Last week we posted our story about Half Moon Bay City Councilman Joaquin Jimenez’s May 23 encounter with San Mateo County Sheriff’s deputies. I knew it would cause a ruckus. That’s because your opinion of what went down likely depends on your perspective. And your perspective is influenced …
Last week, a decomposing gray whale washed up on Pacifica State Beach. A week earlier, beachgoers were shocked by a similar sight at Half Moon Bay’s Francis State Beach. There have now been a dozen dead whales on Bay Area beaches so far this year. Unfortunately, that may be just the tip of t…
Knowing how to protect yourself and others in the time of COVID-19 has been, from the beginning, a matter of following the experts’ best guess, and that hasn’t changed after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surprised us by lifting the mask rules in most settings.
This won’t be the year that we turn on the faucet in our homes and find that nothing comes out. But it may be the year we contemplate that day. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider the machinations of various local, state and national agencies in the weeks before the long, hot and very dry summer:
It’s not every day an entire community has the opportunity to change so much for the better all at one time. Thursday is such a day.
Recently, the San Mateo County Libraries finished a project that at first seemed without end: Digitizing decades worth of Coastside history. You can now call up 100 years of Half Moon Bay Review newspapers and another 13 years of Coastside Comets — a newspaper that for a time ran alongside t…
A half-dozen top officials from San Mateo County’s law enforcement community gathered virtually on Monday afternoon to answer questions from Coastsiders in a forum organized by La Honda Indivisible, a local chapter of a national social justice organization. They dedicated an hour and a half …
Is there a better word in the English language, one with more positive connotations, than “library”?
The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office is among hundreds of public agencies that have made use of controversial facial recognition software, and, until now, it hasn’t bothered to mention it. Until we asked, the Sheriff’s Office had declined to answer questions about who in the department had …
Pity 50-something Coastsiders. They are old enough to qualify for a coronavirus vaccine, but they might not live long enough to actually find one.
Long about the 2-hour, 6-minute mark of the city of Half Moon Bay’s “2021 Priority Setting Session” last week, Deborah Penrose unmuted herself, both literally and figuratively. The always amiable, usually amenable, retired physician had made a diagnosis and the prognosis for this meeting was…
We are learning again that hate is not always Black and white.
Last week, I met a Pacifica resident as she was leaving Senior Coastsiders in Half Moon Bay having gotten the second dose of her vaccine. After sleeping late on that Thursday morning, something she normally doesn’t do, she got a message from her daughter urging her to get in the car and driv…
Farm Day. Dream Machines. Pumpkin Festival. Fish and Fleet. Fog Fest. Most of the biggest events of the Coastside calendar have “gone viral,” which is to say they are gone due to the virus. Again.
“Think ahead 10 or 15 years and ask yourself, what proportion of the activity called ‘learning’ will be located in the institution called ‘school’?”
The loss of the Andreotti barn in Half Moon Bay was a loss for the family, of course, but it was felt across the city and beyond. Many of us saw that barn as more than a farmstand on the way to the beach.
As we slowly edge our way through this pandemic, it’s a good time to remind ourselves that we need to be patient with each other, and especially patient with those we do business with here on the Coastside. Decreased hours, shoestring staffs — we’re all trying to get by, to make do.
New homes in Half Moon Bay must be constructed to accommodate solar power. Before long, city residents may be asked to phase out their natural gas appliances — water heaters, stovetops and so on — in favor of cleaner electric alternatives. And California is mandating that all cars sold in th…
There is growing pressure on public school systems to open their classroom doors and let students inside facilities that have been shuttered for most of the last year. That pressure will only increase as case rates fall heading out of winter. Very soon, school employees are going to have to …
Good news organizations exist as part of a flourishing, elaborate ecosystem. Think of a tree, and journalism as just one branch. It is rooted in community and requires the figurative sunlight of an open government. It grows as part of a forest of successful local enterprises — businesses, no…
We knew this was coming. The vaccine, that is. And we knew just who needed saving. Latinos make up 42 percent of COVID-19 cases despite only comprising 24 percent of the population, and a whopping 92 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the county are among those 60 or older.
There is good news about the world’s oceans. It comes from University of Washington researchers and the journal “Nature Sustainability.” A new scientific article in the journal begins, “Well-designed management systems can improve environmental outcomes of renewable resources.” The subject, …
Several dozen Half Moon Bay High School athletes, parents and coaches rallied just below the high school on Friday. They were politely asking state and local government leaders to reconsider COVID-19 restrictions that have kept them and thousands of other student-athletes off the playing fie…
We don’t usually weigh in on politics in Washington, D.C. Generally, we’re content with our own more parochial problems. But it’s not every day that a mob bent on upending our democratic tradition forces its way into the U.S. Capitol and puts its jack-booted heels up on the desk belonging to…
At shortly after 1 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 7, Mark Foyer rolled up his sleeve and received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine that will protect him from the ravages of COVID-19.
Each week, the editorial staff of the Review meets to discuss ideas for the coming edition. Emerging out of this is a “story budget,” which is a term of art that is essentially a list of stories to work on.
We will all be glad to be rid of the stink of 2020. It was a year unlike any that we have ever seen. We were choked by wildfire, racked by social division and humbled by a pandemic that left us all-too-human and unprotected.
Don’t be lulled to sleep by the soft-spoken, waist-high kid in the green Crocs. Aiden Zahedi gets things done. The same could be said of his friend, teenager Niamh Dawes and their siblings and friends in Kings Mountain. If you have a problem with the government, you might ask them to shame a…
Recently, a caller to the Half Moon Bay Review office wanted to know how many COVID-19 cases there were in our coastal town. The answer, at this writing, is both 379 and who knows. The truth is there is no definitive answer and no solace to be found in any such number.
These are difficult days for local agriculture. That probably isn’t a controversial statement.
In more normal times, this might be the biggest story of the year.
It didn’t take a savant to know that San Mateo County’s fast-tracked proposal to buy two Coastside hotels to use as housing for those experiencing homelessness would be a public relations disaster.
So much is in flux these days, but one thing is certain: This will be the strangest Thanksgiving many of us will ever face.