Thank you from the band
EDITOR: On behalf of the Healdsburg Community Band and the New Horizons Band of Sonoma County, I wish to thank everyone who attended our combined concerts on Sunday, Dec. 9. The Healdsburg Community Church was filled with an enthusiastic audience as the two bands performed their program of Christmas classics. The concert was free, but donations were gratefully accepted. We were overwhelmed by your generosity. Over $1,500 was offered. The donations will go to support the Healdsburg Education Foundation (HEF) and the North Valley Community Foundation Camp Fire Relief (NVCF), specifically for restoring musical programs for students affected by the Camp Fire. Thank you Healdsburg for demonstrating the Christmas spirit.
Lew Sbrana
Healdsburg
Really?
EDITOR: I went to the planning commission workshop this past week and heard the proposal for a 250-seat restaurant on Matheson Street right across from the Plaza. I thought “Really? Why is this project even being considered?”
It’s totally out of scale for the neighborhood and will create a nightmarish traffic mess around the Plaza; the parking is inadequate at best and just because there are already a couple of large restaurants there, that’s no argument for adding another one. This is how a town degrades, one step at a time. This is admittedly a beautiful project, but it is totally wrong for Healdsburg.
You would think the city would get the message; 82 percent of residents surveyed earlier this year said we have enough, or too many, hotels. And, restaurant development goes hand-in-hand with hotel development to grow the tourist industry.
It’s pretty clear a large majority of residents think we’ve had enough tourist development, which is not to say that the tourist industry has not brought some benefits to the city. It has. But, I believe we have reached the point of diminishing returns. I think it was Linus Pauling who said “unchecked growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” In this case, more is definitely not better.
It’s time for an ordinance to limit restaurant size in the Plaza and downtown commercial core, which would be a companion to the new hotel ordinance. And there should be no new proposals for restaurants or hotels considered by the city until the SDAT report has been read and discussed by the community. For the many in this town who have been complaining for the past number of years about too much tourism, this is your chance to make your opinions heard.
Hank Skewis
Healdsburg
Good bye, SHED
EDITOR: The other day I stopped at SHED on North Street in Healdsburg to buy bread and pâté, two of my favorite things to eat. The bread was there, but not the French style pâté that I usually get. I settled for the chicken liver pâté, which isn’t the same thing. But it would have to do. There seemed to be a pall over the whole place. I assumed that was because it was a Monday. But that wasn’t it. When I got home there was an email waiting for me from SHED. It was titled “Changes” and it was from Cindy and Doug Daniel, the owners. The email read, “After much consideration and with much sadness, we are closing the brick-and-mortar manifestation of SHED in Healdsburg, CA. Our online store will remain open for business.” The email also said that the store would be open until Dec. 31, 2018 and then again briefly in January, but only for coffee. I am sorry it’s closing. I will miss it. I have been there many times since it first opened in 2013. I have shopped for bread and pâté, enjoyed meals, including the pizza, attended wine-maker dinners upstairs and listened to authors talk about their books. In 2018, I gave a talk about my own murder mystery. Thanks for hosting me, SHED. What I never did buy at the store were the fresh vegetables from local organic farms, the books about farming and food and the kitchen products that were too expensive for my budget. In fact, SHED didn’t seem like a good fit for Healdsburg, though the town has lots of people with disposable incomes and tourists eager to buy luxury items. I guess there weren’t enough of those people. I never felt totally at home in SHED, though I sat in the restaurant, talked with Cindy Daniel, who was always warm and friendly, and listened to her husband, Doug, play great jazz with a group of fellow musicians. SHED was a good idea. I especially liked the upstairs, which Cindy and Doug called a “modern grange,” and where people could join conversations about food and farming. I remember that Lynda Hopkins and her husband, Emmett, talked about the flooding of the Russian River, which put their farm, Foggy River, under water. Doug and Cindy always invited the community into SHED. The community came. But there wasn’t quite enough for the community. It was too spiffy to be a “modern grange.” SHED broke old rules. Maybe it broke too many of them. Cindy and Doug, I’m glad you tried.
Jonah Raskin
Santa Rosa
