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You don’t have to live in Palo Alto to know that the city boasts thousands of Teslas, two Philz Coffee locations and the ZIP code 94301, which has the priciest homes in the nation.
Nor do you have to be a resident to know that in April one local resident (Mark Zuckerberg) testified on Capitol Hill about his company’s role in influencing the 2016 presidential election or that in September, another resident almost upended a nomination of a Supreme Court justice.
For better or worse, the past 12 months reinforced Palo Alto’s often-touted reputation as a “special place” — a small city with an international reputation. From figure skater Vincent Zhou, a former Hoover Elementary School student, landing a historic quadruple lutz in the Pyeongchang Olympics to the blood-testing giant Theranos shutting down after its top executives were indicted for fraud, Palo Alto and Palo Altans often found themselves in the national spotlight in 2018.
No one epitomized this “beyond the bubble” aspect of 2018 more than Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University who in September publicly accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in the early 1980s. On Sept. 16, the Washington Post broke the story about Ford’s accusations, which go back to a party that she and Kavanaugh had attended when they were both students in suburban Maryland.
Ford told to the Post that she was at a house party when Kavanaugh, with the help of his friend Mark Judge, pushed her into an upstairs bedroom before pinning her to the bed, putting his hand over her mouth and trying to remove her bathing suit. Later that month, she recounted the story in a sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and gave an unforgettable response when Sen. Patrick Leahy asked her what she remembers most about that evening.
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense,” Ford said.
Ford told the Senators she had been hesitant to come forward because she didn’t think her testimony would do any good, and in that, she proved prescient. While her allegations prompted the Senate members to delay their vote on Kavanaugh and order a brief FBI investigation, the Senate voted 50-48 on Oct. 6 to confirm his Supreme Court nomination.
Ford paid a price for stepping forward. She told the Senate committee of the “constant harassment and death threats” she and her family had to endure. She also received an outpouring of support from her hometown. On Sept. 23, hundreds of residents gathered on the corner of El Camino Real and Embarcadero to hold “I believe Christine” signs and chant: “We are her. She is us.”
While Judge Kavanaugh managed to advance his career despite public outcry, another judge, Aaron Persky didn’t fare as well.
Persky, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge whose June 2016 sentencing of former Stanford University student Brock Turner sparked a nationwide backlash, officially lost his job in June 2018 after a bitter recall election. With 60 percent of the voters supporting the recall, Persky became was the first California judge to get ousted from his seat in more than 80 years.
The outrage stemmed from Persky’s six-month sentence for Turner (who then only served three months) after the Stanford swimmer was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious and intoxicated woman behind a Dumpster outside a fraternity house in January 2015. The sentencing sparked an emotional community debate this year about sexual assault, entitlement and judicial independence.
The national focus had a Palo Alto focus. Michelle Dauber, a resident and Stanford Law School professor, led the charge against Persky, arguing that even before Turner, he had demonstrated a “pattern of bias” against women and persons of color. LaDoris Cordell, a former Palo Alto councilwoman and a retired judge, defended Persky and argued that recalling a judge based on one controversial decision undermines the principle of judicial independence.
The fall from grace was even more jarring for Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. The Stanford University drop-out who founded Theranos in 2003 was indicted in June on two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. Holmes and the company’s chief operating officer, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, each face up to 20 years in prison, for allegedly carrying out a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme against patients, doctors and the firm’s investors.
The company was headquartered on Page Mill Road until September, when it unceremoniously shut down after a troubling history of overpromising and underdelivering on faulty and often inaccurate medical devices. In his book, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” which in June entered the New York Times best-sellers list, journalist John Carreyrou detailed Theranos’ history of deception and characterized the company’s behavior as a “a giant, unauthorized medical experiment.”
Other local experiments fared better. In late October, the autonomous-vehicle company Waymo secured a permit to release a fleet of 39 driverless cars in Palo Alto, Mountain View and other cities in the area. In late November, about 50 residents came to Cubberley Community Center to get a glance at the future. Some lauded the disruptive potential of self-driving cars; others feared their destructive power (one attendant said he saw an autonomous vehicle drive the wrong way around a median island near Alma Street, prompting a child on a bicycle to fall over and hit her head).
While Waymo isn’t quite ready to release its full fleet of autonomous vehicles, the startup ThorDrive is speeding ahead with its own plans. In late November, ThorDrive launched a partnership with Hassett ACE Hardware and the Palo Alto Fire Department for a same-day-delivery service involving an autonomous van. Though the vehicles still include a safety driver (a condition of its DMV permit), ThorDrive founder Seung-Woo Seo said the cars could become fully autonomous within a year or two.
Among those who attended the kickoff event for the new service was Palo Alto Vice Mayor Eric Filseth, who is very likely to become mayor in 2019. During the ceremony, Filseth said he was excited to see Palo Alto at the center of the worldwide trend.
“Clearly, autonomous vehicles are going to be a revolution on transportation,” Filseth said.
• On “Behind the Headlines,” Weekly journalists discuss the year’s memorable news. Watch the show here or listen to the podcast version of the episode here.
Thank for the years recap! It was well written and enjoyable to read. Thank you for being aexcellent local newspaper/news source!
This article states that Ford and Kavanaugh attended the same party back in th 80s. That is not a fact that has ever been established. He (and everyone else Ford claims were there) denies it and she can’t remembere where or when the party happened.
“He … denies it…”
He’s a documented liar. Other than that….
He apparently *does* like beer.
This article should be titled, “How Palo Alto Embarrassed itself in 2018.”
The fact that Zuckerbergs and Palantirs have moved in has not improved life for a lot of us, it’s made things life-alteringly more expensive and changed our City in ways that has directly taken away from many families’ lives and productivity. I would thank you to stop painting everyone with the same brush just because of the zip code. Steve Jobs came here because he wanted to live in an “ordinary” neighborhood not in Beverly Hills — he and those that followed wanted, ironically, to benefit from being from being in the community of those who were living here and whose town and quality of life they have been thoughtlessly destroying.
To me, a big story is that people are finally talking about the demand side of the manufactured housing “crisis”, but not enough. Maybe in 2019, they’ll start talking about the town Bill Gates is building in Arizona, and how to create multiply the number of desirable places before this one becomes too messed up to ever regain the reasonable traffic circulation, resident-serving retail, lower noise levels, urban open space, amenities, safety and sense of community that attracted all these entities to begin with.
Palo Alto can lead the way in 2019!
Let’s get America back to work! Start with all the laid off federal workers in the area. Palo Alto should offer to host a meeting (maybe at Facebook or Rosewood, with palantir security) between President Trump and Mexico so that our President can collect the check he promised from Mexico for The Wall, thus enabling the President to start the government back up!
Easy Peasy (note: not “Penc-sy”) Pumpkin Pie! Palo Alto can lead the way and put us on the national map as winners!
It’s amazing watching people in the most expensive zip code in the US, who live right next to a world-class University and research hospital, and literally next door to multiple high-paying tech HQs, come on here and complain about having a tough time living their fantasy of being a quiet suburban town. All while actively making the quality of life for everyone else in the region awful. Pushing away new residential construction, which pushes up the rent and sends people over the bridge (which causes tons of traffic).
You’re welcome to move to an actual small suburban town. But population growth is a thing, and when your city has become a major job hub in the region then the right thing for it is to grow and add the housing needed to accommodate those jobs. Either accept that things are changing or sell your rapidly appreciating house and move to a city that’s not going through an economic boom.
Why did Christine Blasey Ford need so much money as per the Go Fund Me page?
Well over $600K+ raised…was this for air travel, lodging and wardrobe?
Her legal expenses couldn’t have amounted to that much.
In any event, it was a historical event from the standpoint of sexual-abuse related disclosures.
She didn’t set that page up and did not solicit donations. But it’s going towards security, as her life has been upended and she’s had to move multiple times due to death threats.
@@Evil,
Rents in this area have been high for as long as anyone I know can remember. Rents are the more volatile thing in light of demand here, which has also always been high as long as anyone I know can remember, even during the downturns. The lesson of every job center around the world that has densified is that more building only raises costs higher than they already are, displaces middle and low-income people, all the while developers cash in on the false idea that you can build your way out of the high costs. It is the densifying and displacing people that is making life here awful, driving up the costs — more building has been happening and demand from companies that are unwilling to pay back is causing it.
The fact is that building more in this area will not bring down prices by supply since demand is not a static thing. There no a set number of people that we just need to build for; if we build more, even more will come. Companies that really should move elsewhere for the health of this community and our nation, will not because they don’t want to be the first ones.
Stop enabling their ruining of this area at the expense of people who sacrifice for whole stages of their lives to put down roots. The capper is blaming people who are having their lives ruined and paying for others to do it to them, so that some companies can crowd in and have a Palo Alto address.
You are framing the situation in a way that indicates you are either new here and have no idea that things weren’t really much different in the 80s or you are a developer shill who benefits from the false framing to bully into more unsafe development. The demand side comes from companies who could more easily move, and SHOULD because it is simply not possible or healthy for this nation to pack everyone who wants to live here into this one region.
Here, read this article in the NYT – May your City never become San Francisco or…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/upshot/happy-new-year-may-your-city-never-become-san-francisco-new-york-or-seattle.html
What was associated with SF becoming a high-rise farm in the last decade? Not affordability. People were pushed out, the City went from 15% African American to 5%. Small business were pushed out, just like in Palo Alto. Apartments are the worst places to live in a high demand area for affordability and stability.
No, “growth” was not inevitable, because we are not an island, this is a vast nation that has far more huge areas that could have used that development money, the jobs, the “growth”. Instead it went to ruin what was good about SF and the Peninsula for a few selfish people, and for this century’s even more selfish, entitled, and navel-gazing version of yuppies. We should have a law that companies have to apprise their workers of the cost of living here in an open and transparent way when they make an offer.
The Peninsula is an arid region that simply does not need the growth. Companies need to stop being evil, stop blaming others for the problems they have foisted on the region and the damage they have done to the lives of so many ordinary residents who benefit not one whit from those companies being here. The infrastructure is already overtaxed. The problem is that companies haven’t considered how they can get what they need by moving and creating more centers of innovation in places that want and can handle the growth, and where there is PLENTY of affordable housing into the foreseeable future for whoever makes the first moves.
Feigned ignorance of BEING EVIL is no excuse…
Is it possible to tear down many of the newer office buildings and housing developments in order for Palo Alto to retain some of its former atmosphere?
I would imagine that such an undertaking would be very expensive. Instead of a development movement, there should be a demolition movement starting with 101> San Antonio Road>ECR. The office complexes along Alma Street (in downtown PA) should also be removed and a building moratorium enacted throughout the city.
Palo Alto in the late 1950s-early 1970s was so much nicer than it is today. There is way too much traffic and University Avenue is no longer a place to go shopping. The same can be said of California Avenue.
Why does everyone want to be so upscale in Palo Alto? Back in the day, if one wanted to live that way they resided in Atherton or Woodside.
@Don’tBeEvil – what is consistently overlooked is the fact that Palo Alto has the bones of a town. That’s how it started and that’s what we have to work with.
As is, growth has happened well beyond what our bones can support. We cannot relocate the bay or any other bit of geography. Nor, at this point, can we change 101 or 280 or even the Cal Train tracks w/o massive and absurdly expensive disruption. Because we have over-developed ourselves into a corner. Cramming people and buildings in is one answer, but it is an answer that creates problems.
It is smart to recognize when limits have been met and even smarter to recognize when they have been exceeded. Resistance isn’t happening b/c people are opposed to change; it is happening because people are recognizing that we have exceeded the limits of what this area can reasonably sustain. It’s time for Palo Alto to hit pause and reassess.
Can I just say what a relief to find someone who actually knows what they’re talking about on the internet! You definitely know how to bring an issue to light and make it important.