Medvedev seeks help for Russia's 'Silicon Valley'

California Avenue, as a district, has had hits by the city like sucker punches, one after the other, for the past few years.

So one would have hoped that among the things the President and his entourage did, would be to EAT at restaurants (not just use their free wi-fi, sitting over a cup of coffee and dessert).

They would SHOP at the tons of mom and pop stores on California Avenue, bringing home MERCHANDISE, and not just close the street yet another time, making it difficult for SHOPPERS to get to the district.

The street was closed to everyone from 10AM-3:30PM and all he bought was a drink and an ice cream? He was there for TWO hours? Come on folks, give small business a break. It's shameful.

I was on University Avenue at noon and business was bustling. A few hours later, I went to California Avenue, and access was restricted at every turn.

So heartless City Hall socks it to these poor merchants yet again, while protecting University Ave. Remember all those power outages, when restaurants had to evacuate diners at 5PM and cancel reservations for the dinner crowds, because they had no power? Heh?

Another business day shot to hell for them. Odd there were no local glory hound politicians on hand taking credit for this - guess only the upper echelons of city hall knew about it, and they can take the credit for yet again, HARMING California Avenue business.

Other than 15 mintues of fame, what did it do for California Avenue merchants, and will whatever it did offset their loss that day?

An observer--maybe you should read this comment from another thread:

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"Posted by Jay Thorwaldson, editor of the Palo Alto Weekly, 1 hour ago
Jay Thorwaldson is a member (registered user) of Palo Alto Online

With the exception of Printer's Inc. Cafe and some small sections of California Avenue, there was quite a bit of foot traffic and restaurants were doing a brisk business for the most part. Couldn't tell how the merchants were faring.
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Not sure why you are making this an issue. Not sure where you are getting your "facts" from, either (So heartless City Hall socks it to these poor merchants yet again","Another business day shot to hell for them"and " HARMING California Avenue business.")
Not sure what city hall has to say about this anyway--he went to see a Russian company that was HQed on California Avenue. But typical PA--complaining about nothing.

However, I will say that a few weeks ago I went to California Avenue for dinner. When we finished dinner at 8PM, we wanted coffee--both the Starbucks and Printers Inc. cafe were closing and this was on a saturday night. California Avenue is a disaster.