Have lived here for 2 years…read more Pros: - Great location near highways and San Francisco - Bart station - Close to Burlingame for restaurants / downtown - Good schools - El Camino and Tanforan Cons: - No police force. Sheriffs from SM try to cover, but burglaries and car break-ins are rampant. No residential patrols - Traffic cameras at Millbrae and El Camino. Lame - Trash service personnel and policies unfriendly - City services old-school (hard to register for online bill pay, alarm permit, etc.) If you want to be near SF and highways (and aren't attached to your valuables), this may be the place for you.

Beautiful City to raise your young family. It has one of the best school system in California…read more The City is clean and safe. It has several Festivals events for the family throughout the year.

I've lived two streets away from this little creek and park for six years and never realized it,…read morebut this year during quarantine I noticed it on Maps and had to check it out. The first time I came here I was actually a little scared! It's a legit woodsy area right next to a neighborhood, with a small babbling (or maybe trickling) creek. The mallard ducks like to call this place their home, mostly visible in early morning or evening (you can sometimes catch them sleeping!). After you get used to the insular quietness of this park, you come to really appreciate it! It's a very short path (I think my Fitbit logs it as about 200-300 steps across), but it's very peaceful. You can listen to the birds chirp, the squirrels rush about, and the water and gentle rustling of leaves. I also found it funny to catch the squirrels yelling their heads off more than once. It's located between two streets, so you can clearly see houses on both sides, and it's pretty safe. I'd recommend taking a stroll! But not too many so I can keep the quietness to myself :)

Arroyo Park is probably one of the honey's favorite parks in the area due to the mallard ducko…read morefamily that is in residence in the stream. We originally thought it was just the drake and his two ladies, but it turns out there's at least two drakes and three hens, though we don't usually see them all together. The park is open during daylight hours and is usually pretty quiet, surprising for being not that far from the bustling El Camino street. You can hear the brook babbling and birds, and it's really quite a lovely stop.

BURLINGAME COAT FACTORY…read more Okay, now that I got that out of the way, this is definitely a higher income, bougie neighborhood. Good luck finding parking that you don't have to pay for if you're in the main business/downtown area. Lots of people walking around, especially with their dogs and going about on their bikes. Some restaurants have signs saying no laptops on certain days or at certain times so you know there's an epidemic of people camping there for hours or work from home-cels or even worse, Linkedin-cels, but I digress. I did exit the car and see a $9 fancy almond croissant on the road and really, really debated grabbing it, ripping off the bottom part and eating the top part, but we already ate and were going to eat more, so I stayed away from that. Pretty cold and windy even on a bright May afternoon, so I guess that's why people wear a lot of North Face and puffer jackets here. Nice mix of affordable businesses (Ume Tea) and more higher end eateries. Good diversity of, at least food from what I've seen, and everything was largely walkable. Parking can get tight though, even with paid parking. We went at an odd time that was a bit before brunch, so I can't imagine the weekends. Aside from maybe 5 places (all food, lol), nothing really matched my interests and tastes, so it's not a must stop for me to peruse around.

Burlingame feels like the creature out of The Thing: It's trying hard to look like the thing it's…read moreimitating but doesn't quite succeed. It has a main drag but the street is so narrow that a car parallel parking sends the street into paroxysms of a nasty traffic jam. There are parking lots but they're small and tightly packed making people hot tempered and cranky with an over-reliance on car horns. It's high end but overly eclectic, the niche players here (Madewell, L'Occitaine, Trina Turk, Departures) but not the more affluent mainstream stores. It's The Truman Show of suburban towns. It feels artificial like astroturf.

I used to come here when I was a kid and our family would come before Halloween and pick out a…read morepumpkin. It was a family tradition long ago. The place has been know for great pumpkins and there food seen. We visited some of that with going to their Farmer's Market and walking along the coast line to view the ocean. We stayed at the iconic Ritz Carlton and it was amazing. Such a nice town to come to and visit. The people are so nice here and the town is just adorable.

Half Moon Bay- Cute little coastal city and we drove to there from Filoli for about 45 minutes with…read moresome traffic. We picked a good day to go because it was a bit hot that day but Half Moon Bay was so much cooler. It was about 60F-65F at Half Moon Bay. We walked the downtown MAIN St. and they have some unique boutiques and cute restaurants there. We also checked out a "jail" in Half Moon Bay and the volunteer who worked there was so friendly and informative and she talked about the history of Half Moon Bay to us. There's a small museum behind of the "jail". If you are in the area or close to Half Moon Bay, it was worth a visit.

Saw this place one day out of the corner of my eye while lost on Kings Mountain Road when I saw the…read moresign... returned another day only to find it closed. Went today (open Saturday Noon till 4pm). Interesting place, a flashback to simpler but rougher times in the "old West". A little slow if you go on a day without the pre-mentioned & reviewed activities and/or events, but still nice to see how it was to live through memorabilia of that long-gone era. At one point I commented out loud that an item hanging from the ceiling looked to be a bedpan, and the attendant sitting bored behind the counter corrected me saying it was a popcorn popper, and the bedpan was 3-1/2 feet to the left, over the door. Interesting but boring unless you use your imagination. PHOTOGRAPHICALLY SPEAKING: Lots of bygone era items to photograph but very dark. If you're into history this is nice to visit, but bring an external flash so you don't kill your camera battery using your built-in flash extensively. The exterior of these old structures is very photographically excellent... hint, hint. http://www.historysmc.org/woodside.html NO parking anywhere except for the unpaved dirt parking lot - if the parking lot is closed, then the "store" is also. Hours Tuesday/Thursday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Saturday/Sunday 12 p.m. - 4 p.m. Admission Free (donations accepted within)

So during our little trip to Woodside, we decided to continue driving and drove past this huge old…read morewooden building, this place looked all old and such. Anyways, we decided to see what this place was and it turned out to be a museum of some sort. Simply put, back in the day this was the only rest stop between SF and SJ and most of the time people would stop here and take a break or so and then continue on their journey. Its a General Store/Post office/Dentists office/Shingle Making place. The owner of this place? Dr. Tripp. Him and this other guy who i forget the name of came from the East Coast and decided to go into the shingle business. And since they were surrounded by all these redwoods it was a pretty good idea. Anyways they opend up this general store for people passing by and etc. Dr. Tripp was also a dentist so he would also do dental check-ups for people too. Overall this place isnt very big, its got a lot of old stuff to look it. You can see some old food cans and wine bottles. Some real old piggy banks that do pretty neat coin tricks. Old shoes and stoves and a toaster which looks like a cheese grater. In the other rooms they have a bunch of huge saws and other gizmos and gadgets. There is also the old dentist chair and notary area/post office in the smaller room. So if your in the area take a quick look, our tour guide was Bill, or Bob dang I forgot but yea he or someone else will give you a tour and explain the story behind the place. And there is no fee and if you feel like donating money there is a barrel with the tag donation labeled on it. Also on every first sunday of May they have this little get together where they take you on a wagon ride and have little activites like making rope and ice cream etc, a pie eating contest, shingle making etc.. So bring some kids along, it might be a lot of fun. I mean seriously, when was the last time you actually went on a wagon ride?

As small business month is quickly approaching I was thinking how wonderful and vibrant a community…read moreJapantown San Jose is. There so many seasoned and new diverse small business owners here in the heart of Japantown. Classic Loot, Zonkey, Roy's, Santo Market, Taqueria Corona, Minato, Hukilau, Kazoo are among my families favorites. We have also enjoyed and welcomed new businesses too like Banne (yummy sourdough) and Furbaby Fancy petgrooming (the most posh and elite pet grooming experience) into our rotation as well! I should have just listed all the businesses here! So proud of the businesses that contribute to our community!

There's definitely a lot of history, community love, and shops and restaurants here. It's smaller…read morethan the other Little Tokyo in LA and Japan Town in SF (I think), but because we came around midday lunch time on a Tuesday after Fanime, not many stores or restaurants were surprisingly open? Maybe it's due to being after Memorial Day or because most of them were night time dinner service only restaurants. Either way it's much cleaner than Little Tokyo in LA and with less jump scares and trash everywhere. Easier to find parking and more affordable, in a sense, than Japan Town SF. Stopped by the Japanese grocery store and Santo Market while we were here. Fun to kill a couple of hours, I suppose. I just gotta come back here again when more things are open !

This was a hidden gem in downtown San Mateo! Great curated offerings on Asian American history,…read moreAsian cultures and languages, fiction, cookbooks, children's books, etc. They keep up to date on new releases as well. I saw plenty of titles I would expect in an Asian American bookstore, as well as many others that I was glad to learn about. The offerings seemed to be majority East Asian though were not restricted to that. The shopkeeper was welcoming and gave a tour of the different sections, and found some good picks for us. I wish I had taken photos of the interior, but I was preoccupied with browsing! If I wasn't on a schedule I could have spent a lot longer there. This is definitely worth a visit and they're doing important work!

I was so excited to see the Asian American Curriculum Project when I looked up bookstores in the…read morearea while we were visiting San Mateo today. I used to visit East Wind Books in Berkeley often before they closed, so I was happy to see another store that focused on writings by Asian authors. It was a great selection to choose from in every category! I wish I had taken some photos! The gentleman working was super friendly and explained where everything was and how it was organized. We had a great time browsing and found some great books to bring home. We were even gifted some handmade knitted bookmarks! We will definitely be back when we have even more time to browse!

This event turns the City of Good Living into the City of Inconvenienced Living for the residents…read morethat are prevented from either leaving their homes in their cars, or prevented from returning to their homes in their cars. There should be a pathway that is made clear how residents can leave and return to their homes. We are trapped like prisoners in our own neighborhood. My wife and I went shopping at 8:30am and came back to having to park 6 blocks away from where we live. We got lucky to find a parking spot. Maybe we should hold Hometown Days in the hills of San Carlos so the rich folk can finally understand how much it sucks to be trapped in or out of you own neighborhood.

I believe San Carlos is still the city of Good living and I would definitely stand up for that…read more It's smack dab right in the middle of San Jose and San Francisco. It's nice getaway from the city life. There's a library close by , I've got downtown close by with all kinds of restaurants, bars, and shops. There's even a market and bank downtown . They have a farmers market downtown every Sunday . I go to first Baptist church Sundays and the exit leads right to the farmers market. The diversity has become more evident here these days and it's the good kind tho,it's the kind that creates community. It's great to see people come together. You'll see great events here like hometown days and the art and wine festival which is one of the most awesome festivals ever. I work close by my house. I could even walk to work. I've even gotta girlfriend in San Carlos that's within walking distance. It's never good to be too comfortable but it's safer than most areas. Even my cat doesn't feel afraid and she walks down the street at times. We have a train station and a pretty good bus station. If you don't think so well we have the Samtrans building close by so you can even voice yourself. This is home to the family eucalyptus st Christmas lights every yr. They still have the downtown blocked off a bit for vehicles from the Covid times but I've recently realized that's it's actually kinda cool. It's great to be able to walk in the street freely but also it's not bad because I do door dash and I've never had any problems picking up any orders at any of the restaurants downtown. You'd probably love Burton park too. There's tons of basketball hoops , tennis courts , and the bathrooms are one of my faves. There's also live music at the park in the summer and there's two different play areas one for super small kids and one for the other kids which is cool because it makes it safer. Kids can get crazy wild yknow