Surfers Beach and two areas of Linda Mar beach are still closed, but may be opened after bacteria levels are measured on Monday, according to the County Times. These beaches have been closed since a sewage spill on December 27.

Most of Half Moon Bay State Beach and the areas near Pillar Point Harbor have been covered with advisories. Swimmers and surfers are warned not to use these areas.

I visited the filming of “Memoirs of a Geisha” yesterday afternoon around 4pm.  It was crowded, but orderly. I didn’t any obvious evidence of substantially worse degradation than had occurred during the building of the set.

I was impressed with the low level of impact on the neighborhood, given the sheer amount of activity.  With the buses and parking out of the neighborhood, the biggest impact on local streets was from locals who came to get a look at the action.

The biggest impact was probably on the parking lot for the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, which had been designated the “Base Station” and was filled with trucks and trailers.

Click an any image to see our photo album.

The La Honda Fire Brigade’s A.R.F. Fundraising Drive hopes to raise $20,000 to equip the brigade’s new All-Hazard Rural Fire Engine with the gear we need to fight wildland fires on the south coast of San Mateo County. Click “Read more” to read the entire release.

NOTE: I’m experimenting with ways of running reasonable community (non-business) press releases on Coastsider.  Let me know what you think of this approach. Do you appreciate this, or does it detract from the news orientation of the site?

Supervisor Adrienne Tissier will attend Wednesday’s Midcoast Community Council meeting to introduce herself and to hear from all of us.

This first Midcoast Community Council meeting in 2004 will have several other items of wide ranging interest:  We will have a presentation by the Sheriff’s Dept. Office of Emergency Personnel giving their presentation on the tsunami warning system and a discussion on the Granada Sanitary District reorganization to a community services district.

The meeting will be Wednesday, January 12 at 7:30pm at Seton Hospital in Moss Beach.

I never thought I’d be interested in County politics, and I’m still a novice. Perhaps County politics is an acquired taste, like smelly cheese or fertilized eggs, biologically active and redolent enough to make the novice gag.

But the unincorporated Coastside has a huge stake in County government—and next to no influence. The County Times has a story on how the Board of Supervisors will look in the wake of Supervisor Mike Nevin’s departure.

The most interesting — and perhaps most telling — moment came when the board considered which supervisor it should appoint to the SamTrans board. Board President Rich Gordon had designs on the spot, but Supervisor Jerry Hill nominated new Supervisor Adrienne Tissier.

The move drew charges of “cronyism” from Gordon, who said there were already three other members of the SamTrans Board from Daly City and that the post should go to a non-Daly City resident. Hill said he believed Tissier’s experience would be invaluable on the board.

Hill, Tissier and Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson voted for Tissier, while Gordon and Supervisor Mark Church voted against the proposal. The split vote and Gordon’s comments were a departure from the consensus driven board under Nevin.

So what does it all mean?

One supervisor said he saw an alliance emerging between Hill, Tissier and Gibson with Church and Gordon on the other side.

In the same column, the Times took a look at the Peninsula Politics blog, whose headlines we’re featuring on Coastsider. PenPol has drawn attention to the Nevin-driven Daly City domination of the County and its transportation agencies.

Sources said former county Supervisor Mike Nevin believes the blogger is an aide for Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.

The source said Nevin believes the blog is slanted toward Yee and may be an attempt by Yee to hijack the political discussion on the Peninsula. Yee and Nevin will be squaring off for Jackie Speier’s State Senate seat.

A Yee aide quickly discounted that rumor.

There you have it, an anonymous source being quoted on the identity of an anonymous blogger. Maybe County politics is more interesting than I thought.

The filming of “Memoirs of a Geisha” at Fitzgerald Marine Preserve will begin tomorrow, Monday morning—about a week sooner than reported in the San Mateo County Times or the HMB Review.  As of Friday afternoon, the escrow account for restoration was still a work in progress.

I found this out from the location manager while touring the site with neighbor Alan Harris today. Harris has brought a geologist and a biologist on the site to get their impression of the damage that could happen as a result and how long it could take to repair.

According to Harris, the impacts on the site could be greater than anyone expects and could last a lot longer.  Some areas of the park may have to be roped off for two to four years so that they are undisturbed while native vegetation is reestablishing itself. The area planned for cameras contains some of the most-native vegetation on the bluff.

Harris’s principal criticism is of the process. “I shouldn’t have had to find a geologist and and biologist,” said Harris. “The County should have hired them and presented their findings at a public meeting.”

The impact on the neighbors is large as well. There are four large trucks parked on a lot next door to the park, and more will probably arrive as the filming starts. A generator is chugging away in the lot and carpenters are hard at work with power tools.  ATV’s are moving up and down the trails to the film location.

In the park, activity has picked up over the weekend. Paths have been widened from three feet to eight feet. Where the paths have been widened into roads, there are areas where ATV’s have passed one another and widened the road further. There are signs of recent erosion, and the straw meant to protect the new roads has been matted into the mud.  It’s a big operation.

The pictures at right show some of the impact of the filming. Click on any image to see Coastsider’s album of the filming.

A 1946 tsunami drenched Half Moon Bay and drowned a man in Santa Cruz, according to “The Tsunami of 1946 and 1960 and the Devastation of Hilo Town,” by Walt Dudley and Scott C.S. Stone. Meanwhile, scientists have come to the conclusion that an earthquake at 9pm on Jan. 27, 1700 created a tsunami as powerful as the Indian Ocean wave on the Pacific Coast of North America. They believe that tsunamis occur here an average of once every 375 years.

So, you might want take at look at the online brochure about tsunami preparedness from Western States Seismic Policy Council, which includes the basic facts about previous tsunamis in California. According to WSSPC,

Since 1812, the California coast has had 14 tsunamis with wave heights higher than three feet; six of these were destructive. The Channel Islands were hit by a big tsunami in the early 1800s. The worst tsunami resulted from the 1964 Alaskan earthquake and caused 12 deaths and at least $17 million in damages in northern California.

The map at right comes from the Association of Bay Area Governments. It’s a screen capture from a really slow Java map. I did the hard work to make it readable. Click on the image for a larger version.

Like a lot of California towns, Montara was a creation real estate speculation. In Montara’s case, the speculators were about 75 years too early.  But their modern successors have been hard at work since the seventies to transform the face of this little town. Because of this, you have to look pretty hard to see evidence of Montara’s history.

In one sense, there’s a not a lot here. There are only a few houses that are more than fifty years old, there’s no center to the town, most of the really old buildings are dispersed among a lot of new construction, and there is very little commerce on Main Street.

But as you walk around the town, you begin to see the signs of Montara’s history. Some artifacts are hidden at the end of wooded dirt roads and on the tops of hills.  In front of my house, under of layer of earth, there is the remains of the original sidewalk.  Around the corner from me, a mysterious stone pedestal at Acacia where Third turns into Kanoff marks the entrance to the original town of Montara. A line runs through the town where the streets change names and seem badly stitched together. This was the border between the original town of Montara (to the east) and the town of Farallone City (on the coast).

Michael Smookler fills in the gaps between these monuments with his book “Montara: A Pictorial History”. It’s filled with photos, maps, and newspaper clippings. His text introduces us to the people who built this town and their descendants who still live here. He spent a lot of time interviewing these people, and it shows.  His book is as much a history of the founding families as it is a history of a town that didn’t make a lot of history. It contains many personal photos of people who lived here fifty or more years ago.

Michael’s book is intended as a poke in the eye of the San Mateo county historian who came to Montara last summer and couldn’t tell us where the name of the town came from, let alone its history. He told Michael that there wasn’t enough to write about. Michael realized then that if he didn’t write the history of Montara, it may never get told.

I’m not sure I’d agree with Michael that “Montara has had a rich, full, and colorful history”. But it’s a real place in a way that so many California suburbs are not. And it took a hundred years for Montara to develop that sense of place.

The town has transformed profoundly since it was rediscovered about thirty years ago and you have to look hard to see the traces of the remote outpost that was here between the building of the Ocean Shore Railway and the transformation of the railroad’s bed into Highway 1.

I’ve walked most of the streets of this town and a lot of the trails, but this book confronted me with my own ignorance of my home town.  I’ve missed the remains of the Montara Inn tucked in a natural amphitheater in the hills. I didn’t know that the paved path through Rancho Corral de Tierra was the remains of a winding road to Pacifica that was built in 1915 and was our main northern connection until Highway 1 was taken over the Slide, especially after the Railway went of of business in 1920.  I’d never been to the 20-foot monument to Gaspar de Portola hidden up in the hills. I didn’t know what to make that cryptic stone pedestal just down the street from my home.

Michael’s book is beautifully printed. The quality of the paper, printing, and reproduction is excellent and this book will have a special place in Montara homes long after we’re all gone. I strongly recommend you buy a copy.

After reading this book a couple of times, I came away with desire to explore these old sites and get a better understanding of how Montara sits on the hills by the ocean and to know more about the surrounding communities. Michael Smookler understands this. He’s working on a walking tour of Montara and beginning research for a book on the history of Moss Beach.

Michael Smookler will be speaking, selling, and signing books on Sunday, Jan. 16, at 3 p.m. at the Goose and Turrets Bed and Breakfast, at 835 George St. in Montara.

The Sheriff’s office suspended the search for the 28-year-old Fremont man whose car was found on the Devil’s Slide on Wednesday. This includes searches on the cliffs, in the ocean, and from the air. According to Lt. Steve Shiveley of the Moss Beach Substation, “the case has reached the investigative phase.” The Sheriff will be working with Fremont and SF State Police on the case. Ongoing searches will continue with volunteers, however.

The Mercury News reported Tuesday:

Herminder Sidhu, a resident of Fremont, was reported missing by his family after he did not return home from a trip to San Francisco State University on Sunday morning. Sidhu’s car, a white Honda Accord, was found parked on Highway 1, overlooking the ocean on Monday evening.

Rescue climbers began combing the cliffs around the car on Monday evening. A plane from the air squadron joined the search on Tuesday morning.

The construction of the set for “Memoirs of a Geisha” is in full swing at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve and the County is still negotiating how to pay for the repairs to the Reserve.

According to Dave Moore at the County Department of Parks and Recreation, they are “working on a bond escrow type account” to pay for repairs after the filming. A biologist is currently estimating the cost of repairs. Asked if the escrow agreement would be completed before filming begins, Moore said, “I sure hope so.”

The company has agreed to restore the area to its condition before it was disturbed by the crew, as well as some adjacent areas that the filming will not impact.  The Review reported that the estimated cost of repairs was $5,000. Moore told me that the $5,000 figure is the estimated additional cost of restoring adjacent areas.

Columbia Pictures paid $18,000 to the County for a permit, and donated $28,000 to Friends of the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve to get permission to do the filming in the park.  Permission included a Planning Department waiver of the required Environmental Impact Report.

Not everyone feels the county is handling this well.

Neighbor Alan Harris believes that filming must be stopped until a full assessment of the project’s impact on the park’s wildlife and geology by independent experts is complete. And filming should be permitted only if they conclude that the project poses little risk to the park and that the studio agrees to repair any damage.

Harris plans a a tour of the area at Noon this Sunday, Jan. 9. The group will meet at the southwest entrance of the park at the end of Cypress Street. This is a followup to a tour Harris led last Sunday, Jan. 2.

Harris reports that the crew has already shown its lack of respect for the neighborhood by parking in a No Parking area and starting opeartions, including truck engines and some very noisy generators well before the 7am start time required by the County.

Terry Plank of Weddings by the Sea has concerns about the equity permitting filming. After 15 years of performing small weddings on the Reserve blufftops, he was told that weddings would no longer be permitted on the bluffs. in a letter to the Parks and Recreation Department, Plank wrote, “It appears that the influence of a wealthy multi-national corporation is enough to override your stated concerns of impact on the Marine Reserve. The impact of the preparation for and filming the Sony Pictures movie is considerable in comparison to 2-20 people walking into the Reserve and spending 45 minutes to an hour.”

Another neighbor has posted more pictures of the construction and its impact on the Reserve.