Tom McEvoy

When in or near downtown Sunnyvale, heart of Silicon Valley, I suggest you stop in to savor the flavors of award-winning il Postale Italian-American Bistro. They're located on Washington Avenue just east of Mathilda Avenue in what once housed Sunnyvale's original post office.




My wife and I frequent the establishment which has been open for about 10 or so years. Joe Antuzzi, proprietor, keeps a daily "postcard" of specials for soups, entrees, desserts, wine and drinks. Along with the specials, Joe keeps his standby menu with a wide variety of Italian and American fare to indulge your taste buds and with choices to please just about every palate.

While there last night, my wife chose their special -- a cioppino (mixture of different kinds of fish and shellfish in a slightly-spicy tomato sauce) served around a mound of risotto. My wife commented that serving it in this manner allowed her the best of both worlds -- cioppino and risotto!

Off the regular menu, I had a generously-sized salmon filet topped with a few scallops and a dill sauce. It was served with risotto and mixed vegetables. Both were excellently prepared and presented.

So when in Sunnyvale, stop in and check it out for lunch or dinner. Definitely one of our favorites!



il Postale Italian-American Bistro

127 Washington Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94086

408-733-9600

http://www.ilpostale.com/



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Yes, I know, what I am doing talking about a 1987 movie, La Bamba? Well, the reason my wife and I saw the movie (again after almost 20 years) and the life-lessons that I picked up by watching it are the reasons I write about it today.

Lou Diamond Phillips starred in this film about an early rocker, Ritchie Valens and his meteoric rise to stardom at age 17 back in 1958. Born in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California, Ritchie had a keen ear toward music from an early age and was constantly learning and innovating as he grew into his teenage years. On one of his dates with his girlfriend, Donna, Ritchie would bring his guitar. In fact, he ALWAYS took his guitar with him everywhere he went! Donna would ask him "do you always carry that guitar around?" Ritchie would reply to her with "Yes, it's my future."

At the tender age of 17, Ritchie Valens was killed in a plane crash which also killed Buddy Holly and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. His career lasted but eight months and he wrote and released three top rock hits "Donna", "Come On, Let's Go" and "La Bamba". Los Lobos played the Valens music in the film and his song, "La Bamba", has been credited to Valens as having been one of the first Latin or Chicano rock songs and by its originality of fusing a song sung entirely in Spanish with rock music, thus creating a new sound. A sound influenced the group Los Lobos and others.

The way he lived his life, portrayed in the film, teaches us about two of life's lessons. First, have a singleness of purpose and pour your energy into it to learn, and get better at what you do best. Second, he teaches us to always focus on your goal. In his life, it was to be "a star". Perhaps a third would be to always carry your tools with you, whether it is a guitar or your intellectual property.

The real reason to have reviewed this movie was because of the antique cars! A new friend of ours, Don, gave my wife and I a tour of some of his antique cars along with a history lesson not only of his family but of use of some of his cars in period movies. When he mentioned that many of the cars were used in scenes in various movies, we started searching for them. We started with "La Bamba". The film, incidentally, was filmed in the Watsonville area of North Monterey County. It even made me recall my own childhood years growing up in rural-like Los Altos because the movie had scenes of fruit picking and cutting 'cots (apricots) to dry. Something that my mother and dad got us involved with at an early age! For us, around the Fourth of July was all about fireworks, picking fruit and cutting 'cots. Anybody showing up to our place during this time, my mother promptly put to work culling, washing or cutting apricots.

We enjoyed the local history lesson through the antique car "show" that Don put on. Donald Skow, is Pastor of the Hollister Christian Fellowship Church. Next time we hear of a movie with his antique cars, we'll be sure to see it and then I'll tell you about it!

Don also told us about one area that he is focused on and that is his program to help some people living in abject poverty in Haiti (near Port-a-Prince). He is constantly on a quest for donations of either financial or basic supplies and tools. Some things like school supplies, basic need items for families to enable them to better their living conditions are key. Don often goes there to keep the program going and to reach more people. If you can be of help, give Don a call or send him an email. He told us that "giving a little will help a lot". His tag line is "Vintage Truth in the Real World". I wonder if the "vintage " part has to do with his antique cars?


Donald Skow, Pastor
Hollister Christian Fellowship Church
2350-A Technology Parkway
Hollister, CA 95023
831-637-1056
donskow@pcwi.net
http://www.hcfonline.com/

And you thought that this post was going to be only about a movie!

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• Los Altos, Mountain View, Palo Alto - 83
• Cupertino - 94
• Almaden Valley - 120
• Los Gatos, Saratoga - 126
• Campbell - 128
• Cambrian - 148
• Sunnyvale - 152
• Willow Glen - 163
• Milpitas - 210
• North Valley - 263
• Downtown SJ - 275
• Evergreen - 303
• South San Jose - 446
• East Valley - 662
• Morgan Hill, Gilroy, San Martin - 698

The median price for single family homes in Santa Clara County was $799,000 in December and compares to the record high reached in April 2007 of $868,400. This is a decrease of $69,000 or about 8.0%. Much of the increase to the record price was the result of a mix shift from lower priced homes to higher priced homes. In other words, less transactions out of the total occurred in lower priced homes and a higher percentage occurred in higher priced homes, resulting in an increase in the median. This mix shift was predominately caused by the mortgage problem that started in February when lenders started to increase their scrutiny of and place a higher standard on underwriting loans for borrowers hitting entry-level homes the hardest.

Median prices for single family homes by county in December 2007 were:

• Santa Clara County - $799,000
• San Mateo County - $875,000
• Santa Cruz County - $546,000
• Monterey County - $520,000

Has this drop in median prices been felt evenly throughout the county? Absolutely not. With seller's markets in the northwest portion of Santa Clara County (Palo Alto, Los Altos, Mountain View), their characteristics are price appreciation along with good demand whereas those affordable priced home communities have characteristics like a buyer's market with price depreciation and very poor demand.



We call the "sweet-spot" of the market that price range which has the lowest DUI. For December the $1,000,000 to $2,500,000 range is the most brisk. Next comes the $750,000 to $1,000,000 range and then the $2,500,000 to $5,000,000 range. This is unusual because a normal market has the more affordable priced homes with the lowest DUI.



For condo/townhouses the picture is similar but slightly better with a DUI reading of 264. Real estate investors take heart as the DUI picture has degraded substantially to a reading of 529. This means under the current rate of sales of multi-unit properties, there are about 1.5 years of supply! Even though rents have increased about 10% during both 2006 and 2007, the demand is just not there making this the best time for an investment purchase since 1994. Lenders have substantially increased the borrower's requirements to obtain a loan for investor property purchases.


Why follow all this, spending time dissecting statistics, reviewing trends and investing time doing old-fashioned real estate analysis? Newspapers and other sources tend to generalize too much (i.e., the national real estate market, the Bay Area real estate market, etc.) and you lose the fineness of being able to use information strategically to offer the best advice so that clients make better decisions.



If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to post them here.



Thanks for reading!