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Cheri Parr
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Cheri Sinclair shows us how to use a hard hat.
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A couple of people saw us in our photos on Devil’s Slide without any head protection and advised us to get some hard hats (and a better tape measure). Cheryl Sinclair of Seton Medical Center Coastside went out and got us some. They’re not going to protect us from the 4-ton boulders, but they’re still a good idea.
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When will the Slide open again?
It’s the subject of speculation and rumor. We’ve heard plenty guesses and we’re sure you have, too. Here’s your chance to go on the record, participate in an experiment, and maybe win yourself a nice dinner.
Give us your best guess as to when you think the Devil’s Slide will open. When the Slide opens, the closest estimate will win a $100 gift certificate from the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company in Princeton, the sometime home of Devil’s Slide Ale. If we have more than one correct guess, we’ll pick the winner randomly from among the prescient few who got it right.
To enter, click on the graphic. Give us your best guess and information on how to contact you if you win. There are a few questions about how you’ve responded to the traffic problems in your own life. You can choose to answer these questions or skip them. One entry per person, please. Entries close at 11:59pm on Sunday, April 9.
CLARIFICATIONS: "Open" is defined as reliably usable for the foreseeable future. Interpretation is at the sole discretion of the judges (me). Employees of HMB Brewing Co and Coastsider and their families aren’t eligible.
On April 2, 2006, Highway 1 at Devil's Slide was closed for the third time since 1983, because the landslide it is built on was slipping into the ocean yet again. It was a disaster for the community, turning commutes into hours-long ordeals, hurting businesses on both sides of the closure, and creating an air of uncertainty and mistrust of the authorities whose job it is to repair the highway.
It was also a watershed moment for Coastsider. Literally overnight, our readership quadrupled and we became a household name in the community. One of the things we're proudest of is that when it was impossible to know what was going on out there, we were able to bring photos, video, and news from the side of the mountain. We learned a lot about covering breaking news and doing video, but it would also have been impossible if we had not refined our online production techniques while covering the community for two years when the Slide went out.
We've gathered all of our coverage of the Slide closure on this page, to provide the community with a little perspective and quick reference to the biggest story on the Coastside.
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Barry Parr
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Cheri Parr
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Cheri Parr
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Mike Wong, 1995
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I wanted to take a few minutes out from the craziness to thank everyone for coming to Coastsider during the Devil’s Slide outage.
Monday was the biggest day in Coastsider’s history. We delivered more than 4,000 pages to 1,200 unique users, and a bunch of people registered on the site or signed up for Coastsider Alerts. This is above and beyond a recent spurt in our traffic. In typical week, we host about 2,500 different readers viewing 7,500 pages. This is no typical week.
We did our best to meet your expectations by being the first source with detailed photos of the damage, the first source anywhere to report that the Slide would not be open Monday afternoon, and the first site to post detailed video of the damage. Compare our footage to the repurposed video that you get from the local TV news shows.
Now would be a good time to let your friends know about Coastsider. You can send them our URL (https://coastsider.com), recommend that they subscribe to our Alerts , or use the "email" link at the top of every story to recommend a particular story, such as our exclusive video of the Slide.
We’ve solved the technical problems keeping Internet Explorer users from using our streaming videos of the planning commission interviews and the Half Moon Bay Fire Chief’s recommendations.
The videos are now on special pages that are designed to work with all browsers. Please let us know if you have any problems.
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Barry Parr
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Coastsider now sponsors Highway 1 between Montara and Devil's Slide. Some people have already asked us when they can help with the cleaning. As soon as the weather is a little more predictable, we'll schedule a cleanup day.
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I have removed the link to the video from the February 22 meeting of the Half Moon Bay City Council from the site at the request of MCTV.
As careful as I have been about getting permission to use photos, art and stories on Coastsider, I made a mistake last week. I assumed that you didn’t need permission to run a video of a government meeting from a public access station. In retrospect, that was pretty dumb. I digitized a VHS tape I made from their scheduled broadcast of what was arguably the most significant city council meeting in years because I thought it was important for the public to see what had happened.
Of course, MCTV is doing the work and spending the money to diligently tape and broadcast meetings all over the Coastside. And they own the rights to those tapes.
I have asked MCTV for permission to continue to offer the video to our readers, but they have declined to give it.
If you want to see the meeting, and I think you should, you should ask MCTV to rerun it. As far as I know, that’s the only way you can see it.
If you’re already getting Coastsider’s news alerts, you know that it’s the only way to find out about breaking news on the Coastside.
If you’re not, please take a few seconds to subscribe. Here on the Coastside, we don’t have a local radio station or TV news, so it’s hard to know when news is breaking. Coastsider sends out email news alerts only when we have breaking news that we think you’ll want to know:
When Mavericks was scheduled, and when the winner was announced
When Half Moon Bay’s City Council came to a dramatic compromise on the planning commission
During the Half Moon Bay City Council recount
When Highways 1 or 92 have been closed
It’s easy to subscribe or unsubscribe. Just enter your email address in the field under the "Why Wait Till Wednesday?" header on the left-hand side of the page and click "Submit", or go to our Subscription page and enter your information there.
This week, we conducted a test survey of Coastsider readers. The questions were pretty basic, and there weren’t too many surprises, but I thought you’d be interested in seeing the results.
We received 72 response, with 50 coming in within 24 hours. This is pretty good considering we didn’t push too hard for responses. The Survey Monkey service worked great. We will be conducting more reader surveys in near future.
There are disclaimers that go with all surveys of this nature. Those who responded are clearly not a random sample of Coastsider readers, let alone of Coastsiders in general. No biases were obvious from the results, however. There is a wide margin of error in these results, so the numbers I’m reported have been rounded for readability and to avoid suggesting more precision than they really have. Despite these disclaimers, the results are interesting.
Where you live (no surprises here):
Half heard about Coastsider from a friend and a quarter from a Google search.
The most popular features, not surprisingly, are the news and comments, with 75% saying news was just fine or that you loved it and 65% saying the same about the comments. Classifieds, the calendar, Mercury News headlines, and weather were not used by about half the readers, but about a third of readers liked them just fine.
Three-quarters of respondents buy from merchants at Strawflower Village at least weekly (11% never do), and half say they buy downtown at least once a week (18% never do). The next most-popular destinations were San Mateo (82% do that monthly) and Albertson’s shopping center (half buy there at least monthly).
In the open-ended comments, several readers thought Coastsider was a little biased. Everyone recognizes it’s a personal site, so I wind up writing about what I’m interested in from my personal point of view. If there are stories or opinions you’d like to see more of on Coastsider, you’re invited to send them in.
Help test a Coastsider reader survey
We’re testing a new survey service, and we’ve got a short survey we’d like you to complete. It’s only a few questions and your responses will be kept confidential. Click here to take survey [opens new window].
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