She said there used to be fewer cars. Specifically, she remembers University Avenue being very dead.
Kathy claims that University Avenue is now a popular place for young people to hang out. She says that there are way more people and cars than there were beforehand. She says there are more crows now than there were before.
She used to bike and walk to the top of the Stanford Dish before it was paved. She talks about a swing at the top of the dish that her children used to play on.
Kathy still rides her bike, but she says many people in the area have taken to cars. She says people will use cars to go short distances. She still walks the Dish, but says its different now because it is paved and there are barriers.
Interviewer: Where are you from?
Female: Palo Alto, California.
Interviewer: All right. And what did this place used to look like about 10 years ago or so?
Female: Ten years…back in the dinosaur days when we moved in here in 1984?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Female: It was pretty built out when we moved in here. It’s more or less the same in the residential areas, however, the downtown and…well, we have two downtowns here. They’ve really, really changed. It used to be downtown Palo Alto at 5:00 it was dead. I mean, we said you could play…you could bowl on University Avenue and… Well, you have no idea. I mean, it was like that when we were students but we came back and we said, “”God, this…”” Could you bring water when you go down, please?
Male: Yes, I’ll bring you some water.
Female: Anyway, so it really has changed because now everybody who’s anybody not from Palo Alto comes to downtown Palo Alto on the weekends. They just roll in. I used to work at city hall and if you stayed past 5:00, you know, the people who wanted good parking spaces were all coming in, and sometimes I would work late till 7:00 and it was just amazing. And all the people in Palo Alto have no idea. I mean, do you ever go downtown?
Male: Not unless I have to.
Female: Exactly. But do you go downtown to Palo Alto?
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, I always go.
Female: Yeah, because now it’s a happening place. And if you are in the single scene, I mean, I would see it in the parking lot. All right, so that was five years ago. I retired last year. I’m not observing it now.
Interviewer: How else do you think the area has changed maybe in respect to the flora and fauna?
Male: It’s actually terribly.
Female: The flora and the fauna of Palo Alto?
Interviewer: Yes. Have you noticed a difference in the hills, the color, or anything like that?
Male: This year compared to any other year, it is green, you know.
Female: Okay, so you mean natural flora and fauna?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Female: Because I was gonna say people are paving over more of their own house lots. But part of that has to do with the drought and so there’s much less lawn, this is really good, you know, but what they replace it with is a lot of pavement. So flora and fauna… We have the Baylands, and we have the hills, the Foothills Park, our parks. I can’t say that I’ve noticed a great deal of change in the flora and the fauna natural… You’re the birder. Okay, I will say…
Male: Much more mountain lions.
Female: Yes, and a lot more crows.
Male: I would say there’s one very major difference is that mountain lions were totally unknown in my childhood in this community. I mean, they were known to have existed in the past and it was said that there were some in San Mateo County but nobody had ever seen them, and you know now they’re back, so that’s one big difference in the fauna.
Female: So predators and that’s because of the deer, right?
Male: Well, that and the fact that they can’t get depredation permits and things of that sort. And the idea was to get rid of the mountain lions at one point because they were dangerous and are thought to be dangerous, and now not so much.
Female: And now there’s actually…what did we read today? There’s a bald eagle family in Palo Alto?
Male: The article in the paper said there are a lot more eagles in the Bay…in this area now.
Female: Was it not talking about something in Palo Alto or did I imagine that?
Male: Yeah. No, it was.
Female: Yeah, so in historic…before they were declared to be endangered, they had not been seen for decades and they were…1915 somewhere up north. Did you read this article?
Interviewer: No. Now I’m gonna have to.
Female: Yeah. It was in “”Mercury News.”” I’m sure it’s elsewhere too but it was really exciting and they were talking about moving into like in the redwood tree by an elementary school and nesting there. So these kids were having this amazing experience and they were talking about, you know, that is a success story in bringing it back. They had to bring the breeding pairs down from Alaska or Northern Canada or something like that.
Interviewer: That’s great.
Female: Anyway, so that’s a positive thing.
Male: Oh, and the Baylands has been the restoration of the marshland has helped a lot in terms of the waterfall in the area.
Female: But I think we have a lot fewer songbirds and crows have displaced a bunch of whatever used to be around. I remember lots of more doves.
Male: And it’s crows back [inaudible 00:05:38]
Male: I never remember crows. Many, many years ago there were ravens but not crows, and now we’ve got virtually all crows and I haven’t seen a raven or heard a raven for a long time now.
Male: There’s some down in the Baylands but not too many.
Female: Yesterday afternoon we were driving down the El Camino. I looked up and there were crows harassing a raptor, and it was either red-tailed. I didn’t know that they were bald eagles. They had a light tail but it was very high. Anyway, they were dive bombing, you know how they do. They just harass any raptor.
Female: They work together to take off [crosstalk 00:06:16]
Female: Yeah, they were about seven of them and they were just chasing this guy and he was swooping and, you know, avoiding.
Interviewer: So what are some activities that you used to do here and what activities do you do here now? Has there been a change?
Female: When we moved into Palo Alto in 1984, one of the reasons we moved was so that we would be able to do biking. We were early adaptors on that one, as far as people in their 30s and 40s, but that was a conscious choice so that we would avoid the need for car commuting. My husband works on the Stanford campus and I worked there for a while, then I remember when my kids were growing up, we lived across the street from an elementary school and there were…I don’t think any of my neighbors actually drove their kids that could walk, it would be crazy, but there were people who lived five or six blocks away who because they were so…they thought the traffic was so bad, they were driving their kids to school through this signalized intersection, therefore, making it really bad for the kids who were walking or biking.
And so we started this thing about encouraging people to walk. And whenever someone is promoting that, then there’s a real reduction of the congestion around schools and… This is not answering your question but we ended up…so those of us who started this just kept on working and I never dreamed… My kids, it was like a 10-minute bike to Paly. It was like, “”No, we’re not driving,”” you know. If it’s pouring rain and you have to carry something delicate, “”Okay, this time, but you’ll pay.”” I mean, it was just like, “”You’re not getting driven to school.””
Interviewer: Yeah. It seems like that’s starting to come back. I know students at Stanford will drive to a different place on the campus. I’m like, “”Well, you could easily bike or walk straight there.””
Male: I have lived in this…this is the house I grew up in, believe it or not, so, you know, I’ve seen a lot of changes. I mean, so many it almost is irrelevant in a way because in the…
Female: Everybody had changed…
Interviewer: Activities so like activities you do now that are a little different.
Female: Okay, I was gonna say that other people in the ’80s, I watched a lot of other folks were getting 2, 3 cars and just driving, and when my sons were in Paly, there were all these boys and girls who turned 16 and got a BMW. This was the first boom.
Male: Really? What year was this? Just out of curiosity.
Female: So he graduated 2000 so right before…2001 or isn’t that…
Interviewer: 1998, around…
Female: Yeah, yeah. So I noticed that those folks were very different than the Palo Altons that I had known. They didn’t come in the…we weren’t in the right type of neighborhood. College Terrace was sort of isolated so we didn’t have to put up with them that much, but now they’re moving in.
Interviewer: Do you still get to bike like you wanted to? You used to bike a lot.
Female: I keep that up. So what did I stop doing?
Interviewer: Or is there any new activities like…?
Female: We used to take our families for picnics up in the Dish area. In those days you could.
Male: To where?
Female: To the Dish.
Interviewer: Up to the Dish.
Female: There were homemade swings that you could swing out over a ravine. Did you ever do that with your kids? And the students who do go up there and do cow tipping, do they still do this? I have no idea.
Interviewer: No.
Female: I did not do that. But anyway, in the ’80s and early ’90s, we really enjoyed that. That’s not something you can do and it was controversial when they closed the Dish but I will say we lived right off of Stanford Avenue and all of those runners just ran straight up the hill, Cardiac Hill, they call it.
Male: There’s a reason.
Female: Were you one of those?
Male: Yeah, every Tuesday.
Interviewer: I run there once a week.
Female: And Don Kennedy and Bill Dorum [SP] and…
Interviewer: I run it too every week.
Female: No, but you don’t run straight up over…
Interviewer: Oh, no, it’s different?
Female: They had no paved paths so everybody was running all over the hill, and if it was wet, they would just go get slightly out of whatever the one was, and it was a disaster and that has grown back. And the coyotes kept them back and all sorts of… You saw nothing. No wildlife at all when you were in this area so it was wonderful that we could experience it and climb up the hill and look over the bay. But it was not managed properly and Stanford took a lot of flak and not allowing dogs in there. So it was really flak but I think it was a…it was a good thing.
Male: It was interesting, though, that they paved. You have these paved roads now that you’re allowed to stay on and you can’t get off.
Female: It would be nice if it were DG. Yeah, right, and those of us who used to wander across complain about the lack of being able to…having that choice. But given how many people are going there…
Interviewer: Yeah. All right, thank you.