Goodbye Bay Meadows ...

Some friends invited me to $1 Friday Nights at Bay Meadows racetrack last night -- really a goof since we're really not horseracing types. $1 admission, $1 hot dogs, $1 beers. Fun to watch the races and different from the usual Friday night entertainment, even if my horses ran more like donkeys ... Motivation for doing this was the whole track is being demolished to get ready for a new wave of residential construction in the fall of 2007. Given the price of real estate around here and the many outlets for gambling online and elsewhere, i'm not shocked at this and mostly happy about this, apart from potential heavier traffic that is likely to impact us Burlingamers once the new residents move in. Burlingame recently scored a mini-victory when in the face of massive local opposition to studying a new on/off ramp at Peninsula Ave & 101, the San Mateo County planners agreed to scrap the notion of even studying the interchange. Great example of how local politics works when the citizenry gets sufficiently motivated ...