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.
You may — or may not — notice a change in the physical dimensions of your Half Moon Bay Review this week. While the length of the paper is the same, the width of the Review is half an inch narrower. This new size is a more standard newsprint size, and the change was necessary because our pri…
There was something undeniably odd about watching Mayor Adam Eisen deliver the “state of the city” address online last week. Maybe that is because the city has never been in such a state.
A year and a half ago, the Coastside Fire Protection District board of directors overcame its reticence and agreed to be a fiscal sponsor for local Community Emergency Response Teams. Today, those teams are a force of more than 200 well- trained Coastsiders, prepared to help professional fir…
In 2020, the California economy imploded, wildfires burned hundreds of homes sending toxic smoke over our cities, and a novel virus infected nearly a million people in the state, killing more than 17,550 at last count. Oh, and California remained one of the most expensive places on the plane…
As I write these words (and perhaps even as you are reading them) there is much that remains to be determined in the general election that concluded voting on Tuesday. There is a monumentally important presidential election that brought a historic turnout across the 50 states. The future of …
The woman who came into our office more than a week ago was extremely unhappy. Not at the Review (this time), but at San Mateo County election officials. She wanted to know why there was no sign of a voting center at 537 Kelly Ave. in Half Moon Bay. She swore the elections website promised o…
It’s impossible to make an informed choice in the current election of San Mateo County Harbor Commissioners without knowing a little of the sordid history of the organization. Unfortunately, that requires hip waders and a strong constitution.
There was a time when the Midcoast Community Council was about as effective as drinking a slug of bleach to ward off the coronavirus. Members feuded over issues that had nothing to do with the Coastside, and when they did take up cogent issues, their response was often incoherent. A dozen ye…
Sometimes it seems there are more elected officials than voters on the coast given the preponderance of water authorities, advisory boards and special districts in our largely rural and exurban area. But the Half Moon Bay City Council carries special weight among them, since it leads the Coa…
There are two seats open on the Cabrillo Unified School District board of trustees this election cycle. Last week, we suggested voters in Trustee Area B reelect current Board President Kim Hines. This week, if you live in Trustee Area D, which includes much of Half Moon Bay, we recommend ree…
It seems everything is more challenging today, but nothing more so than running local schools.
If it wasn’t already true, Half Moon Bay is becoming known for its downtown murals.
Please join me in welcoming Debra Hershon back to the Half Moon Bay Review. As publisher, Hershon has overall responsibility at the Review, including marketing, advertising, special publications and events, community outreach, print publications, online resources, and innovation. She also su…
“As the specter of climate change increases, so does the fear and likelihood of more wildfires in populated areas. … Santa Cruz County faces increasing risk of life and property damage from a wildfire.”