Classics by the Sea Car Show is coming to the Ritz on Sunday, August 8, 11am to 4pm. “Travel in Style” will be the theme.  The show will include 50’s and 60’s American classics with special award categories for Best Rolls Royce, Best of Show, Best Cadillac, and People’s Choice. There will be a special Mercedes Benz Trunk Show. The funds raised at this event will benefit the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber’s Scholarship Fund, Coastside Education and Senior programs.  Admission will be $15 to the public.

The Peninsula Open Space Trust has acquired 151 acres of a half-mile west of Skyline Boulevard at the Western boundary of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s Russian Ridge Preserve. POST President Audrey Rust said, “The property has tremendous recreation potential as an extension of the preserve. The existing ridgeline trails offer stunning views of the coastal hills, mixed forest and grassland. Ultimately, when POST transfers this land to a public agency, it will form a wonderful, scenic loop trail system to Russian Ridge.”

The property overlooks Mindego Hill, San Mateo County’s only extinct volcano [picture]. Does anyone else think it’s cool that there’s an extinct volcano in San Mateo County?

Click the “Read more” link for the press release.

Aloha in the Redwoods, featuring the music and food of Hawaii, comes to La Honda Sunday, August 29. All proceeds benefit the La Honda Educational Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to raising funds for teacher salaries, classroom aides, educational enrichment, and the music program at La Honda Elementary School.

The event features slack key guitar and ukelele masters in concert including “Ki Ho ‘Alu” Slack Key Guitar Master Dennis Kamakahi and hula dancers beneath the redwoods. Kalua pig plate lunch will be sold by Ono Hawaiian Grill.

Aloha in the Redwoods will be Sunday August 29, 2004 3:00 ~ 6:00 PM, La Honda Gardens, 8865 La Honda Road (Hwy 84), La Honda [map].

Sponsorships are still available at the Web site, or by emailing or calling 650-747-9633.

The 13th annual Tour des Fleurs happens on July 24. Once a year, coastside family-run horticultural and farms open their doors to behind-the-scenes public tours. This is a unique opportunity to see operations are not generally open to the public. 

The state is taking money from San Mateo county, San Mateo county is taking $700,000 from San Mateo County Parks and Recreation, and Parks and Recreation is closing Montara Mountain Trail at San Pedro Valley County Park three days a week.  Also closed will be San Bruno Mountain County Park near Brisbane, Junipero Serra County Park in San Bruno, and Edgewood County Park near Woodside.

Park gates will be locked on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays starting next week. On those days you will have to see the view from the top of Montara Mountain on your computer. The park closings will affect 100,000 users annually and save $330,000. On the bright side, the governor kept his promise to make it cheaper to register your car. I don’t know about you, but he saved me $55 this year. I plan to spend it on ice cream. Or a tank and a half of gas.

UPDATE: Carl May notes that Montara Mountain won’t be entirely closed: “It will be no big thing to walk around the gates at San Pedro Valley. But the primary reason is that most people hiking and biking Montara Mountain, including most of those who go all the way to the top for the views you mention, enter by way of McNee Ranch in Montara (gate on the east side of Hwy 1 just north of Martini Creek and a few by way of the parking area at Gray Whale Cove). The trail up from San Pedro Valley is the more minor route for mountaintop visitors....From the Pacifica side some use Old San Pedro Mountain Road extending off Higgins Way in Pacifica for access to Montara and San Pedro Mountains.”

I have updated the headline to say that Montara Mountain to reflect this.

Greendale, Neil Young’s new film, which was filmed in and around Half Moon Bay, is being show by the Coastside Film Society Friday night at 8pm. Greendale is the story of a coastal town just South of San Francisco and the people who inhabit it.

I saw Young perform Greendale earlier this year and enjoyed it thoroughly. Like opera, its strong suit is its music, not its plot. Actors played out the scenes from the music, lip-syncing their dialog on the stage while Young played. It was surprisingly effective. Young moved this technique to film. 

One of our readers reports seeing an orca at Montara Beach a couple of weeks ago:

I saw the Orca, as did several other surfers that day. I also saw a flyer in the tackle shop window at Princeton Harbor asking for reports on siting of Orcas seen around our area, apparently they rarely wander out of Monterey Bay.  It was definitely an Orca, 18” tall dorsal fin and a blow hole.

Does anyone else have experience with orcas in this area?

The Montara Beach Coalition has created a beautiful new website dedicated to Montara Beach and the surrounding recreational areas (including McNee Ranch, Gray Whale Cove, and Montara Lighthouse). It’s designed to be a place where people can go for information, pictures, as well as to discuss the area and organize to help the beach.

Illustration: The home page of the Montara Beach Coalition is clearly a labor of love and the work of someone who knows how to design a Web site.

The Surfrider Foundation has turned an old garage into a water-quality testing lab, according to the San Mateo County Times. The lab, which opens Saturday, is located in a garage on the at the end of Stanford Avenue in Princeton [Map], is owned by Sewer Authority Midcoast and leased to Surfrider at no cost.

Surfrider’s 14-member Blue Water Task force has been collecting water samples from 32 sites and taking them to the County’s Department of Health for analysis. The information is used to close beaches and warn the public. Beach and water closures are posted on the County’s web site. The new lab should help the task force get that information to the public sooner.

The Mercury News profiles Mark Sponsler, surfer and self-taught meteorologist whose Web site Stormsurf is considered the No. 1 source of big-wave forecasts on the Pacific Coast. Sponsler consults on the scheduling of Men Who Ride Mountains at Mavericks.  Sponsler makes the point that remote sensing and forecasting make it possible to have a job, live a little further from the ocean, and surf.