Last night we celebrated the best of Redwood City at the Climate Best Awards. As you may know by now, the Climate Best Awards is an opportunity to recognize and highlight the people, organizations and businesses who make Redwood City a special place to live and work.

We had a stand out year – over 2,150 people voted and 146 Redwood City businesses were represented.

The Awards took place at Angelicas, and you could feel the sense of community among the crowd as everyone got the chance to mingle, enjoy music, food and drinks.

Redwood City Mayor Ian Bain gave opening remarks to the crowd, “This group right here, represents the best of the best that Redwood City has to offer. I am proud of each and every single one of you. I have patronized all of your businesses. It really is an honor to be nominated and to those of you who win, it’s a huge honor to say you your business is a Climate Best winner”.

This year the Climate Best Awards featured a non-profit partner, The Redwood City Education Foundation.

The event raised $2,500 for the Education Foundation and incoming Executive Director Jason Galisatus expressed his gratitude to Climate Magazine and the Best Award attendees last night.

Climate Magazine Publisher, Adam Alberti, expressed his appreciation for the businesses in the room who he said,“invest both their money, labor and passion into making redwood City the Center of all that is happening on the Peninsula.”

The winners were announced live last night and we’re excited to share them with you!

Best Date Spot: Angelicas

Best Coffee Shop: Cafe La Tartine

Best for Late Night Eats: Tacos El Grullense

Best Dining with Kids: Canyon Inn

Best Pizza: Vesta

Best for Watching the Big Game: The Patty Shack

Best Happy Hour: Milagros

Best Beer List: Gourmet Haus Staudt

Best Wine List: Cru

Best Craft Cocktails: Blacksmith

Best Dive Bar: Sodini’s

Best Live Entertainment: Club Fox

Best Spot to be Outdoors: Courthouse Square

Best Place to Take In History: San Mateo County Museum

Best Family Entertainment: Summer Concerts in the Park

Best Clothing Boutique: Pickled

Best Sporting Goods & Equipment: Redwood  Trading Post

Best Home Decor: Home Goods

Best Florist: Redwood City Florist

Best Real Estate Agent: Vicky Constantini

Best Real Estate Services: Sequoia Realty Services

Best Dentist: Dr. Tim Choy

Best Dental Practice: Redwood City Dental

Best Medical Practice: Kaiser Permanente

Best Salon: Spruce

Best Barber: Redwood Barber Co.

Best Spa: Llumier Wellness

Best Mani Pedi: Bamboo Nail Spa

Best Gym: Obstacourse Fitness

Best Trainer: Keith Kern

Best Fitness Studio: Peacebank Yoga

The new, gorgeous large mural on Middlefield Road and 2nd Avenue in North Fair Oaks is set to be celebrated at a ribbon-cutting event on Sunday from 2-5 p.m.

Artist Jose Castro, 27, a resident of North Fair Oaks, created the mural as a reflection of history, culture and diversity in the neighborhood, according to San Mateo County Supervisor Warren Slocum, who is hosting the ribbon-cutting along with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.

“This mural is more than just a wall with paint. It’s an inspiration and brings life to our people in North Fair Oaks who deal with current and future changes,” Castro said in a statement.

Sunday’s celebration will feature folkorica dancers, mariachi, free hot dogs and a taco truck. Castro will attend along with his muralist mentor Arthur Koch and other county officials.

Slocum praised the new mural for bringing the community together, as many residents and youth participated in its creation, including the actual painting.

This is North Fair Oaks’ second major mural project since 2016. Slocum lauded efforts within his District 4 on numerous public art and beautification projects in recent years.

“The work of art celebrates everything that is unique and special about this community and will enrich the lives of residents and visitors to North Fair Oaks for many years to come,” the supervisor said.

Redwood City’s landmark Lathrop House has a new downtown address, but it will take a while before the mansion built by one of San Mateo County’s founding fathers fully settles in at 701 Hamilton St.

Crews last week had begun lifting and moving the stately home from its longtime site at 627 Hamilton St. toward the sidewalk in preparation for the final push Sunday morning from one side of Marshall Street to the other. At the end of a day of easy-does-it incremental progress, Lathrop House was poised next to the opposite sidewalk, ready for more precision maneuvering Monday, before finally being lowered and secured on its new foundation.

“I did actually see it move five inches,” said 88-year-old Helen Cocco, president of the Redwood City Heritage Association, which manages Lathrop House as a museum. She’d been standing on the sidewalk since early morning watching the slow-motion action. “It was so exciting. I tell you, it was magic.”

In what appears a win-win for San Mateo County and for the cause of local history, Lathrop House’s new home is a parking lot behind the county history museum, which will develop exhibit space and provide staffing. Once the newly prominent, two-story house is ready to receive visitors, it will be open more hours and will have an upstairs Redwood City history gallery, according to Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County Historical Association.  Eventually, if a planned carriage house can be built alongside Lathrop House, visitors would be able to see those two attractions and the museum with a single admission.

Built in 1856 for Benjamin Lathrop, San Mateo County’s first clerk-recorder, the mansion initially stood where the Fox Theatre is today but was relocated to the back of the property to make room for a grammar school. The house was moved a second time in 1905, to 627 Hamilton St., where it was somewhat hidden between county offices and drew only about 10 or 15 visitors day on the three days a week that it was open.

Like a wallflower thrust into the spotlight, the Steamboat Gothic beauty stopped traffic Sunday in more ways than one. Fenced in to allow the movers safely to position cribbing and steel traveling beams under the dark gray, wood-sided house, Lathrop House hung suspended five feet above the pavement, spectacular and delicate as an elaborate, 90-ton wedding cake,  festooned with white gingerbread and a front porch.

The house was supported on blocks of wooden cribbing.  Two hydraulic pushers moved six roller beams measuring as long as 80 feet, which carried the house forward at the rate of three to four feet an hour. From above, the house looked like it was creeping along on enormous orange railroad tracks. Crews used a laser level to ensure that all the beams were in the same plane crossing the street, according to the county’s inspector on the job, Brent Hipsher.

Sam Garcia, the project manager for the move, said the house needed to be high enough to clear an obstacle that could not be removed, a PG&E electrical box, which contains traffic signal controls.

“We had to pick the structure up above that,” Hipsher said. “… Otherwise it would have been a lot lower to the ground.”

Initially, planners of the move had considered putting Lathrop House on a trailer and transporting it down Hamilton Street, but opted for the course least likely to damage the historic structure – inch-by-inch sideways steps across Marshall Street.

“We could do it faster,” Garcia said, “but we were trying to do it as safe as possible.”

Truebeck Construction of Redwood City was the contractor and brought in Montgomery Contractors, Inc., which specializes in house-moving, according to Garcia. Altogether, Lathrop House will be about 200 feet down the road from its old location.

On Monday, crews will begin positioning the 10-room, 3,393-square-foot treasure over its new, seismically-sound foundation, which needs to cure until Thursday. The house has to be lowered into place perfectly, with all corners and anchor bolts matching, Garcia added.

Once Lathrop House is positioned at its new address, it will need to be tented for termites, get utilities connected and other work, and Postel says it’s too soon to predict how soon it will be open for visitors. Tours and visits ceased last June in preparation for the move. All antique furnishings and objects were removed and stored in containers, and windows and walls that might be strained or damaged during the move were taped.

Cocco said Lathrop House has been a boarding house in the 1940s but when the heritage association took control in the 1970s, it was “rejuvenated” to bring it back as close as possible to the way it was when Mr. Lathrop built it. The association maintains the inside, and the county, which owns the building, is responsible for the outside. Moving Lathrop House will cost about $1.5 million, which includes the new foundation.

With the house gone, the entire block where it was located, including the former First American Title Insurance Co., will be redeveloped with a new county office building.

Garcia said he enjoyed working with Cocco and other history enthusiasts and hopes Lathrop House will attract more visitors in its more visible location.  “At the end of the day, we want people to get to know the Lathrop House,” he said.

Redwood City’s council last week approved renewing a pilot program for up to 24 months allowing permitted operators to offer autonomous robots for deliveries in the city.

Two previous pilot projects since early 2017 had Starship Technologies, Inc. operating Personal Delivery Devices on city sidewalks between businesses and homes in partnership with Door Dash and Post Mates. During the trial periods, Starship was making 30 to 40 deliveries per day using 12 robots. The city received just five complaints during both pilot programs, and staff says the electric-powered robots likely had a positive impact on traffic and the environment.

Last year, Starship, a London-based company that has tested their PDDs in over 100 cities, ceased operations to redefine its business, to explore a new service and operations hub in Redwood City and to prep for its Redwood City relaunch by conducting “an extensive driving and mapping campaign,” according to the city.

The new pilot program will allow up to three permits for providers of Personal Delivery Devices, and Starship will be among the permit holders, the city said.

Starship has a lot planned for Redwood City. Local residents will see upgraded robot that can carry up to three bags of groceries, weighs up to 80 pounds and can deliver up to four miles with a maximum speed of four miles per hour, city documents state. During transit, the device is locked and secured and can only be opened using the customer’s mobile app.

Starship is planning to roll out a grocery delivery program in partnership with Dehoff’s Key Market in the Roosevelt Neighborhood and other local restaurants to service the Central, Palm Park, Roosevelt, and Woodside Plaza neighborhoods, according to city staff.

The company is also eyeing a partnership with Redwood City Library on a book delivery program that would have three to eight robots delivering from the Downtown Library to seniors and other physically challenged residents, a program “which would be one of the first in the world,” the city said.

City staff believes this delivery system allows “for some restaurants and businesses to serve a greater number of customers, supporting business activity and customer convenience.”

The low-level radioactive materials discovered in the San Carlos home of a scientist who recently died have been safely removed and identified.

The materials found in the property in the 1000 block of Cedar Street, near Burton Park, on Thursday, May 2 prompted authorities to close the park and a nearby youth center. The materials were contained by a county hazmat crew and removed the following morning by state officials for safe disposal.

“Initial survey data indicates that the radioactive materials consisted mostly of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) such as uranium ore samples, a radium clock and other materials with thorium,” according to the city of San Carlos.

County health officials performed two additional sweeps of the home and didn’t find any other radioactive sources. A private firm will head to the property to clean up any household hazardous waste and materials, but there are no threats to the public at the property, the city reported.

Authorities learned about the radioactive materials after receiving a call from the family of Ronald Seefred, who died on Jan. 1 at age 82. Seefred retired in 2003 after 40 years at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, where he co-authored six radiation physics articles, among other accomplishments. The radioactive materials were found in containers at his house.

Ephrime Mekuria, associate health physicist for the California Department of Public Health, stated that a final list of radioactive materials will be developed for a report. The City of San Carlos said it will make the report available on its website once it is received.

The Bomb. Climate change. Bad governing. Men from Mars. Now plastics pollution has been added to the list of things that could destroy the world.

The realities of Earth drowning in discarded plastic are well documented. China has stopped buying garbage from the United States. The price of recycling is going up, driving many of the nation’s cities to throw it away instead. People are not very good at recycling in the first place and are not willing to give up the conveniences of plastics. The ocean is becoming plastic slush, the main culprits being Third World countries with little or no recycling infrastructure.

Is there anything a trash collecting and recycling center on Shoreway Road in San Carlos can do about it?

Maybe. There are signs that Earth Day 2019 will mark a turning away, at least in California, from the classic – and fateful – “one word” bit of career advice to young Benjamin Braddock in the 1967 movie “The Graduate”: “Plastics.”

The Shoreway Environmental Center is part of the three-state Recology corporation, recognized as one of the most sophisticated and successful recyclers in the U.S. It diverts 80 percent of its collected waste, far more than the national average. Recology San Mateo County has increased its commercial recycling diversion by 39.5 percent since it was established in 2011, according to Shoreway General Manager Mike Kelly. A drop in the worldwide bucket, maybe, but also maybe valuable as an example of how to do it.

Sophisticated sorting-and-baling machinery is one weapon of the South Bayside Waste Management Authority, a 12-member joint powers agency that operates the Shoreway system, which includes the Material Recycling Facility. The buildings and equipment cost $50 million. “The equipment is state-of-the-art and becoming more so,” Kelly said. “The SBWMA is considering equipment upgrades to improve material handling and sorting.”

Perhaps as important as diversion tonnage are Recology’s education programs, waste audits for businesses and efforts to promote policy reforms by governments and plastics manufacturers. Eric Potashner, the corporation’s vice president and senior director of strategic affairs, said that while he admires Dutch inventor Boyan Slat’s quest to scoop up and recycle the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, “We’re looking upstream” (to keep plastics out of the stream in the first place). The company’s Waste Zero motto “is not about sorting, it’s about changing day-to-day behavior,” he said.

“Businesses and individuals are getting better at it,” Potashner said. Recology helps with its education programs and a new “how-to” website, Better At The Bin.

Recology also is trying to influence government and plastics industry policies. Chief Executive Michael Sangiacomo has pledged $1 million toward a California ballot measure modeled after the European Union laws that require recycled content in all plastic bottles and ban certain single-use plastic products.

Before starting the campaign, Potashner said, “We’ll see what happens with Assembly Bill 1080. The voting public is ready for this movement away from plastics.” Introduced last month, AB 1080 would require that single-use plastic packaging and products be reduced, recycled or composted by 75 percent by 2030.

“We have to stop treating our oceans and planet like a dumpster,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, who is author of the bill. “Any fifth-grader can tell you that our addiction to single-use plastics is killing our ecosystems.”

California already is a leader in fighting plastics pollution, being the first state with plastic straw and single-use plastic bag restrictions. Last year, the Legislature passed a law reducing the use of non-recyclable takeout food containers.

In San Mateo County, all cities have ordinances that prohibit free distribution of single-use paper and plastic bags and require a 25-cent charge for a recycled bag.

Recology’s approach with the plastics industry includes Sangiacomo’s offer to meet with the CEO of the American Chemistry Council, which represents plastics manufacturers, to offer a partnership on waste control strategies. The meeting was scheduled for last week. The council has a goal of 100 percent recovery, reuse or recycling of plastic packaging by 2040.

Assemblywoman Gonzalez’s fifth-grader is proving to be an effective secret weapon in shooting for that goal, Recology Public Affairs Manager Robert Reed said. “A lot of our outreach is to students,” he said. “They are doing a good job of showing parents how to do it.”

There still are obstacles to Waste Zero, but they are manageable so far, Potashner said. Although China, which just 14 months ago took 50 percent of the world’s trash and turned it into manufactured products, now takes nothing, there are markets in the U.S. and Southeast Asia, he said.

But “recycled paper used to bring $100 a ton; now it’s $30.” Another complication is a new requirement by manufacturers that bales of recycled plastics contain less than one percent impurities. Economics like these have added recycling costs that have led cities in some parts of the country to give up and throw everything in the dump, Potashner said, “but in California it’s mandatory to recycle.”

A reduction in recycling markets could eventually drive up rates, Kelly said. “As the prices for recycled material decreases, rates may increase to the customer.”  In Redwood City, residents pay $12.87 per 20-gallon can per month on their utility bills, according to the city website.

Other recycling barriers include less-than-perfect household strategies. “In California we do a pretty good job of recycling,” Potashner said. “But we still find some things in bins that don’t belong. Plastic bags are not recyclable with food in them. We’re getting too much organics in the blue (recycle) bins.”

Flimsy plastics such as newspaper, produce and bread bags, and plastic air pillows  also require special treatment. They are almost impossible to recycle and they gum up the million-dollar machines that do the sorting. “The best way to handle this material is to place all plastic film together and take it to your local grocery store’s drop-off receptacle, or bring it to the Shoreway Environmental Center for recycling,” Kelly said.

Other tips are can be found at the Better At The Bin website, which was inaugurated in October. “We’ve had 50,000 visits, with an average stay of four minutes,” Reed said. The encompassing message of the site, he said, is that “people can make a difference by voting with their dollars, buying products with little or no packaging with junk plastic.”

Reed’s community relations counterpart at Shoreway, Gino Gasparini, harks back  to that famous word of advice in “The Graduate.” “All wrong.”