San Jose has an attraction called the Winchester Mystery House. It is a house of obsession—or perhaps delusion—that the widow of the manufacturer of Winchester rifles kept building for more than 30 years, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, following “messages from the spirits.” Despite spending approximately 50 billion in today’s money, it feels like a cheap, stage-set house. Only a few rooms are luxurious, and apparently those alone were designed by an architect. Amateur design is no good. She reportedly never listened to anyone else’s advice. Because she was wealthy, she surrounded herself with yes-men and built this strange house. What a waste of money…. Lesson: listen properly to other people’s advice.
Afterward, I went to Santana Row, San Jose’s new downtown district. It is a beautiful streetscape unified by a Spanish motif. I thought Kunitachi should do the same. That alone would completely change land prices and ultimately enable the city to collect higher property taxes, but the current municipal government probably has no such business sense whatsoever.
Back in Palo Alto, I attended a Lenten Mass at Memorial Church at Stanford.
For dinner, I tried to enter the Cheesecake Factory, but it was impossibly crowded, so I had wine and pizza at Café Niebaum-Coppola. Inexpensive and delicious. Recommended. The wines were the Coppola-brand sparkling “Sofia Blanc de Blanc” (a little too sweet) and a California Merlot (I will add the brand if I remember it).