I never realized the lights in the back of Broadway Plaza are purple. Looks pretty cool at night.
I never realized the lights in the back of Broadway Plaza are purple. Looks pretty cool at night.
The deadline for the Walnut Creek City Council nomination period has been extended to August 15th since Council member Gary Skrel is not seeking reelection. From the City of Walnut Creek home page:
Persons interested in running for the Walnut Creek City Council may pull nomination papers and receive all other necessary forms and information from the City Clerk’s Office. To make an appointment, call City Clerk Suzie Martinez at 925-943-5819. Three seats are up for election. Candidates must be at least 18 years of age, a citizen of the United States, and a resident and registered voter of the City of Walnut Creek.
From the Walnut Creek City Council page:
There are five City Council members. They are elected at large for 4-year, staggered terms; elections are held in November of each even-numbered year. To learn more about individual Council members, click here. Council meetings are held the first and third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. in the Council Chamber at City Hall, 1666 North Main Street. For an agenda of the next meeting, click here. All Council meetings are televised live over Comcast Channels 28 and Channel 26 (Rossmoor), on Astound Channel 29, and on AT&T U-Verse Channel 99. The meeting broadcast is repeated in its entirety the following Saturday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 6 p.m. on Comcast Channels 28 and 26 and on Astound Channel 29.
Back in March I noted that a new cafe was opening this summer within the downtown Walnut Creek Library, and Cafe Pica Deli finally opened last Friday. Their original deli is located in Concord.
Check out some of the dishes:
Cafe Pica Deli has a large Peet’s Coffee selection, as well as offering soups, sandwiches and salads, in addition to various snacks.
Last week I pointed out that the colorful murals from the now closed French restaurant Le Virage in Walnut Creek have been painted over. Several months before this happened I took extensive photos of the murals and looking back I find them pretty darn cool, don’t you think? They covered the entire building, in the back and on the second floor as well. It’s too bad they are now gone. For those that didn’t see the earlier post, you can check out a mural from the inside here.
Facing N. Main St:
Notice that even the hinges are painted:
Check out more photos of the mural including the Eiffel Tower after the jump…
Those getting off Highway 24 onto Mt. Diablo Blvd. to get to downtown Walnut Creek have probably seen the sign for Bikram Yoga. This is not your ordinary yoga by any means. From the wikipedia page:
Bikram Yoga is a system of yoga that Bikram Choudhury synthesized from traditional hatha yoga techniques and popularized beginning in the early 1970s. Bikram’s classes run exactly 90 minutes and consist of a set series of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises. Bikram Yoga is ideally practiced in a room heated to 105°F (≈ 40.6°C) with a humidity of 40%, and is the most popular form of hot yoga (a series of yoga poses done in a heated room).
Since I took up running as a hobby I’ve been getting sore and so decided to sign up for the introductory deal at Bikram Walnut Creek, $30 for 2 weeks. They offer classes mornings and late afternoons/evenings 7 days a week. You can check out there schedule here. Photos of the yoga studio inside are here.
As someone who doesn’t normally sweat much even during workouts, I wasn’t sure what would happen my first class. I wore a tech shirt and shorts, and by the end of the session, despite repeatedly wiping my face with a towel, my eyes were red from sweat dripping in, and my shirt and entire clothing were literally sopping wet. I can see why most of the men work out with just shorts on. A bathing suit probably makes the most sense. The next session I went to several people dropped out mid-session because it was too much. I myself felt dizzy and nauseous during a few poses, but I stuck through it.
So why suffer through this all? For me I feel it helps my flexibility and soreness with my back and other parts of my body so I’m going to try this out once per week from now on. If you think you might be interested keep in mind that parking in back is extremely limited however there is free street parking on Bont Lane around the corner. Also, if you are uncomfortable with heat or have underlying health issues, I strongly recommend checking with your doctor first, and if you do decide to go, bring a HUGE water bottle filled with ice and water.
Has anyone done Bikram? What do you think of it? How does Walnut Creek Bikram compare to other Bikram studios?
From the Lesher Center for the Arts website:
August 17, 2012, curtain: 8pm
August 18, 2012, curtain: 8pm
Presented by Mountaintop Company Productions
Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) is a 1920′s classic play written by Karel Capek. This production is produced by, directed by, and features local college and high school students. R.U.R. depicts a world where genetically engineered robots work alongside humans. The show explores the necessity and worth of consciousness and what it truly means to be human.Mountaintop Company Productions is a local theatre company working to explore and exhibit methods or using theatre for social change, and this will be their first mainstage production.
Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek currently has one Starbucks near California Pizza Kitchen, and a new Starbucks will be opening this October inside Macy’s according to signs plastered all over the construction area. Considering that most of the cafes are on the other side this makes sense, although I personally would have preferred a different chain like Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, but I can’t say I”m surprised. Starbucks is everywhere.
Although some of you may never have dined at the French restaurant Le Virage in Walnut Creek, if you have ever driven down N. Main St. to get onto 680N you probably saw the exterior of the now closed restaurant because of the incredible murals painted around the entire building. Unfortunately, they have recently been completely painted over as pointed out by the editor of Diablo Magazine. When I stopped by to check it out, I noticed that one of the windows wasn’t completely boarded up, so of course I crept up and took an ominous look inside the broken glass window frame:
And this is what I saw (picture intact):
Here’s another view:
This would make for a great horror movie:
Scene 1: Group of teens smoking in the parking lot behind Le Virage at night
Teen 1: I can’t believe they painted it over!
Teen 2: Hey, check out the window, it’s not boarded up.Scene 2: Teens go closer to window and look inside
Teen 1: Cool!
Teen 2: I think we can squeeze in there, let’s go in!
Teen 3: I don’t know, looks a little spooky.
Teen 4: Oh, come on! What are you chicken?
Teen 3: No way, let’s do this.Scene 3: Teens squeeze through opening
Teen 1: Whoa, this is incredible!Scene 4: [?]
So how should scene 4 go? Any suggestions?
It’s really too bad that the murals are gone, although I guess the owners wanted to make it easier to sell. I’ll be making another post next week with before photos of the murals.
Photo from Flickr user oxcnpxo
Have you ever noticed a rotten egg-like sulphur smell in the San Miguel neighborhood of Walnut Creek, which includes John Muir hospital as well as Lime Ridge? It turns out that smell existed long before people even lived there due to sulphur springs and minerals in the area. KQED has an interesting article here explaining the details. This quote comes from a 1915 US Geological Survey:
“A group of sulphur springs lies near the northeastern base of a low ridge about 2 miles northeast of the town of Walnut Creek. The largest spring is on the ridge about 100 yards from its eastern base and 25 yards north of the county road [Ygnacio Valley Road]. When the place was visited, the water rose in a board-curbed pool protected by a latticed house and was piped to a cattle trough a few yards away. It yielded about 3 gallons a minute of mildly sulphureted water, 81° in temperature. . . . Five other smaller springs issue in a belt extending 350 yards along the base of the ridge, in and near the barnyard of Sulphur Springs farm. Two of them have been piped to watering troughs near by. The other three are of seeping flow and form only small marshy places.”
Diablo Magazine recently came out with a slick free book (more like a square magazine) about things to do in Walnut Creek, the first in a series on different East Bay cities.
From an email:
The book is divided into sections—such as food and drink, city life, business, shopping, etc.—and features the Diablo editors’ collective knowledge of the city. There’s a global food tour, top 10 fitness picks, interview with a John Muir surgeon, annual events calendar, and more.
It’s chock full of information, nicely put together, and is FREE, so drop by the Broadway Plaza Concierge or Lesher Center and pick up a copy.
On a side note, the publisher, Barney Fonzi (no relation to Henry Winkler), writes in the introduction:
When I was a kid growing up in Pittsburg, I always looked forward to heading “over the hill” to Walnut Creek.
I always find references to more well-known cities around the world humorous for some reason. The East Bay has quite a few of them besides Pittsburg including Dublin, Albany, and Kensington. Sometimes I wish I lived in Kensington so when people ask me where I’m from I could say in my best Queen’s English, “I’m from Kensington, and you?”