From the Editor Rediscovering the Neighborhood

by Velva Rowell

Two years ago, Dave, Evelyn and I moved out of our 1913 house in order to do a major remodel. Eighteen months later, we returned to our neighborhood and began the long process of getting reacquainted with the people and places of Old Mountain View. Some of this was accomplished in the fall, but winter weather and commitments kept us from really enjoying the neighborhood.

Now that spring is here, we are able to really explore on the weekends. Weekly walks on Stevens Creek Trail with our beagles, and weekend walks downtown for lunch or dinner help to really make us feel connected to Old Mountain View in a way that we dearly missed when we were living an another neighborhood.

We enjoy walking downtown in the afternoon and seeing the new stores that opened on Castro Street during the time we were gone and rediscovering old favorites. Dana Street Roasting Company and Books Inc. are beginning to see us again. We are also enjoying the convenience of having a new Long’s downtown. There are several new place downtown where I will look when it is time to supplement my wardrobe for spring.

It’s almost warm enough to walk to Cascal and have sangria with our tapas. Don Giovanni, the first restaurant Dave and I went to together, is still serving a menu that will allow us to order our first date meal on our anniversary if we like. Evening walks to Hong

Kong Bakery and Ryowa noodle shop are something to look forward to in the coming months.

New discoveries include Xahn, the Vietnamese restaurant that is rapidly becoming one of our favorites, Naminami which serves Kyoto style Japanese food in a very calming setting, and Le Petite Bistro which isn’t really in downtown, but it’s close enough that we can get there easily when what we really want is French food.

Having been gone for eighteen months is just serving to reconfirm something that we had begun to take for granted. Old Mountain View is a great neighborhood, and we are glad to be back.

On a newsletter-related note, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to comment to me about the January issue. My goal in this is for the newsletter to be a tool that brings our neighborhood closer together.

To that end, I would like to extend an invitation to anyone who is interested in writing for this publication. I am looking for a few reliable writers who are willing to work to a deadline and write stories that I assign to them. I’d like to use this publication as another way to involve volunteers who might not necessarily want to serve on the OMVNA board.

If you are interested in writing for this publication and have a story idea or are willing to write a story I have in mind, please contact me at editor@omvna.org because I would love to talk to you!

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