Around Town: a Stanford Super Bowl matchup, a sonic storm and Palo Alto’s kin

In this week’s Around Town column, old teammates face off at the Super Bowl, a storm rips through the Bay Area and Palo Alto evaluates its sister cities.

STANFORD’S BIG GAME … When Palo Alto residents tune in to the Super Bowl this weekend, they won’t just don the red and gold, some will also whip out the Cardinal red. Three former Stanford players are facing off at the big game this weekend – 49ers Running Back Christian McCaffrey and Linebacker Curtis Robinson against Kansas City Chiefs Safety Justin Reid. While neither McCaffrey nor Reid graduated from Stanford, instead opting to leave school early for the NFL (Robinson spent five years as a Cardinal and graduated in 2020), the three mark the most the school has sent to the Super Bowl since 2019. On the Chiefs side, Reid has held down the backfield as the starting safety with one interception and three sacks this season. Robinson, a practice squad linebacker, likely won’t get much playing time. Still, the Stanford alum and Orange County native has been faithful to the 49ers all year as he’s turned down opportunities to join other teams this season. For McCaffrey, he’s had an MVP-caliber season by getting the ball down the field any way he can. It will be an especially interesting matchup when the Niners are on offense, when McCaffrey and Reid will go head-to-head. It won’t be their first time. “(Reid) is an incredible player, used to challenge me all the time at (Stanford) practice.” McCaffrey said in 2019. “I got him a couple times; at that time, I was a young guy. I was a freshman. He got me more times than I got him,” Reid said of McCaffrey in a 2018 interview. “But if we lined up again, it would be a battle. I’d be excited to do it.” They’ll get to do it on the world’s biggest stage Sunday. 

HEAVY METAL OR HEAVY WOOD? … Callum Budas and his friend Miguel Lopez were listening to music in Budas’ house on Sutherland Drive mid-afternoon Sunday, Feb. 4, when they got a sudden surprise. First, they noticed the wind picking up outside. Then, Budas said, “We heard a huge crack.” “Then we heard a thud,” Lopez said. The Gunn High School seniors thought something had happened at a neighbor’s house — until they walked outside and saw a thick, 25-to-30 foot section of the Modesto ash in Budas’ front yard had split from the trunk and landed on the corner of the roof and the walkway. Taken aback, Budas said, “We burst out laughing.” Then they phoned his parents, who cut short their late lunch and hurried home. They weren’t the only ones to experience hazards created by the atmospheric river. Across the city, residents and city utilities workers contended with fallen trees on streets, in yards and on power lines, which caused outages. In the case of Budas’ branch, a city contractor was called in to address the situation. One worker said that trees in Palo Alto like the Modesto ash are particularly vulnerable to snapping because, having been planted in the mid-20th century, they’re coming to the end of their lifespan. 

CASUAL COMPACTS … Some cities are meant to be siblings and others, apparently, just friends. Palo Alto’s long enjoyed having eight sister cities — Albi, France; Enschede, Netherlands; Linköping, Sweden; Oaxaca, Mexico; Palo, Philippines; Tsuchiura, Japan; Heidelberg, Germany; and Yangpu District, China — and worked together for their mutual betterment. Then there is Bloomington, Indiana, which two years ago became Palo Alto’s first “sibling city” – an initiative championed by Council member Vicki Veenker. In the past year, Palo Alto and Bloomington residents enjoyed a series of conversations about race, sustainability and other weighty topics of common interest. Now, however, the city is exploring something a little more casual: a friendship city. On Feb. 5, the City Council approved a “friendship city” program that would have all the diplomatic trappings of the other partnerships but without the commitment. To make sure no city gets the wrong idea, the council set explicit rules. Each friendship city would be re-evaluated every three years and every friendship agreement would expire unless extended. Delegations to and from a friendship city would be limited to one visit per year. The new program, much like the existing sister cities one, will be administered by Neighbors Abroad, keeping the costs to the city minimal. City staff had also proposed potentially downgrading sister cities to friendship status. But both the council and Neighbors Abroad rejected that suggestion because doing so would just be super awkward. “I don’t see how we can go back to a city that we have a relationship with and ask them to change it,” Sarah Burgess, president of Neighbors Abroad said. “It just seems rude.”