The Lost Oaks of California Ave

I like Cal Ave partly because it's about as close as you can get in this area to my favorite neighborhood in Seattle (15th Ave).<p>A photo I took yesterday while they were taking the last one down:<p><a href="http://openbs.org/photo/wehavenotrees.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://openbs.org/photo/wehavenotrees.jpg</a><p>Quote from the notice they sent out:<p>"The City of Palo Alto Public Works Department ... shall be replacing most of the street trees on Cal Ave ... most of the existing trees are Holly Oaks and many of them are diseased and in poor condition. Their branches cover street lights and grow over building storefronts and roofs requiring frequent tree trimming. They bear and drop large acorn fruits that are tripping hazards for pedestrians.<p>"The Holly Oaks will be replaced with Red Maples ... smaller seed fruits that are safer for pedestrians ... metal grates will be installed ... which will bring a uniform look to the business district. The existing tree wells in sidewalks are open wells which may be tripping hazards."<p>Funny thing is there are maples on 15th Ave so I've seen how they are through the year. When the maples start dropping sap on people's cars and all of the restaurants' outdoor furniture is too sticky to sit on I don't know what they'll do. I'll just laugh.

Interesting. Where I grew up (San Luis Obispo county in CA), you'd need an act of congress to touch a mature oak tree–even on your own property. Our church actually had to build around one when they did a building project.<p>I bet if an entrepreneur or real estate developer wanted to cut down oak trees for a building project, they wouldn't get past the first step in the permit process ... but I guess when city wants them gone, they can run it through a "Development" association and play the disease card.

It is sad though, that Cal. Ave, is considered on the most nicer areas of Sillicon Valley. There is nothing really special in it that you can't find in any dinky town in the us, minus the charm that small towns have. Compare to any nice areas to Cambridge, or W. D.C. or NYC, or Boulder. With the money flowing in the area, that that's what they can achieve? At least during the gilded age, the rich folks built memorial things, that are part of this country's cultural heritage. Todays' rich, just build bigger pools or planes, and that's it.<p>Tells you something about rich geeks being really introverted, and just want to keep on themselves.

It might be sacrilegious to ask, but what does this have to do with hacking (other than say, hacking down of oak trees).<p>The fact that it's ranked so highly just goes to show the amount of ass kissing going on here.

This will have adverse effects on the speed and traffic on that street, too. I've attended a couple of local community seminars on city planning, and studies cited there have found that tree-lined streets tend to cause drivers to drive slower and more cautiously. [1]<p>[1]: For example: <a href="http://www.naturewithin.info/Roadside/Tree&#38;Driver_ITE.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.naturewithin.info/Roadside/Tree&#38;Driver_ITE.pd...</a>

They may have suffered from Sudden Oak Death. My limited understanding is that because the disease spreads erratically they prefer to remove infected trees in order to prevent others from becoming infected, and to prevent damage being caused from the dead, weakened tree.<p>Edit: It appears there is no known cure, only preemptive measures.<p><a href="http://www.suddenoakdeath.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.suddenoakdeath.org/</a>

I can't recall the details any more, but I'm reminded that there's a historic cemetery in Boston, where several of America's founders are buried, where the tombstones have all been moved from their original locations. Someone during the Victorian period decided they'd look nicer if they were all arranged in nice straight rows. Nobody recorded their original positions, so the locations of the remains are now unknown.<p>So, cutting the trees isn't <i>necessarily</i> a case of corruption. It's at least as likely that CAADA is run by people whose taste really is that poor.

Yeah this is really bad. First of all too many people have the silly idea that you can move trees around as if they are pieces of furniture or large heavy pieces of sculpture. "Oh lets get rid of these trees and put in different ones. Won't this be grand!" Moving trees is always tricky and not assured of success. When they get those new maple trees in california ave, I am sure that at least a couple of them will die and then they won't have equal height trees.<p>As far as the trees being diseased, all city trees are unhealthy in one way or another. That is because their leaves absorb all kinds of exhaust byproducts, most of their roots are below concrete where they cannot get water or nutrients, and a hundred other reasons. Cities are just not healthy places for trees.<p>But that does not mean that we should not have trees in cities. Trees make us feel better, clear up the air for us and make us happier in general. What if a tree is not healthy -- it is not actually suffering and cannot pass the disease to humans. As long as it looks good and it is green, it is serving its purpose. I guarantee you that the new maples they put in will become diseased pretty soon.<p>So, good idea to call attention to this Paul, but someone should have thought of it earlier.

I used to think most American cities were ugly because nobody cared enough to make them beautiful. Reading this almost makes me think it's <i>intentional</i>. Very sad indeed.

Relevant: <a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dis...</a>

Your tax dollars at work.<p>It's no wonder that the State of California is bankrupt.<p>While the state of California is piling on _billions_ of dollars in debt to pay for unionized wellfare programs, raising tax rates across the board on its citizens, cutting essential city and state services, closing state parks, issuing "IOU's" to people in-lieu of tax refunds, and seeing its general obligation bonds downgraded below "junk" status, it apparently is still OK to spend taxpayer money cutting down perfectly healthy trees to make sure that all of the trees on a street are the same height.<p>This in a state that has more Honda Prius' per-capita than any other state in the union.<p>Isn't being "green" wonderful?<p>I'm sure there's an entire office of twinkie-munching government bureaucrats that could be fired to compensate the California tax-payer for this gross misappropriation of his hard-earned tax dollars.

Private owners respect and conserve their resources.<p>Governments (which is to say, politicians with short lifespans in their job) use up resources in a rush to accomplish short term, idiotic goals.<p>You can look at the environmental records of capitalist countries versus centrally managed totalitarian states.<p>...or you can look at golf courses (which don't "cut down all the trees to keep things tidy") and compare them to the government of Palo Alto.

This reminds of the time they chopped down all the trees along Fergusson College Road in Pune. It was one of the most beautiful streets in the city with trees on both sides forming a canopy almost covering the entire street.<p>The excuse then was creating more space for vehicles and improving traffic flow.<p>The trees are gone; the traffic jams haven't. Very sad.

Something I don't understand: cities and counties in California are said to be broke, so how is it that the Palo Alto public works department is able to send out a work crew to cut down these oak trees? Is Palo Alto running a surplus that they need to spend before its fiscal year is over?

A similar situation almost occurred in my home town of Galway, Ireland. The main square, Eyre square, has historically been shaded by trees - Wikipedia says early ash was planted in 1631 - but the council wanted to remove 80 of 105 of them, "because the landscape levels were to be altered".<p>There was a lot of opposition, though, and eventually they backed down.

Could the trees have been infected by Dutch Elm Disease? I've regrettably seen many old trees cut down from it, and you can't see much damage until it has progressed significantly. Granted, I've never seen it affect an entire street full of trees at once, so that seems suspicious...

Are there any Maple trees that do not either drop sap or other liquids or large seed pods? We're all familiar with the mess the former makes of our cars and sidewalks. The latter, at least the ones from Sugar Maples, are a real pain in the ass, clogging storm drains and such.

Acorns are a tripping hazard? I have never been especially graceful, I have lived under oaks for about half the last thirty years--including at least four that were astonishingly productive of acorns, and bless me if I've ever tripped on an acorn.

I drove by today on El Camino and I thought it looked naked. Now I know why. Freaky. That said, I had a diseased oak lose a limb , if it had hit someone , or my car, it would have really done some damage.

From Palo Alto Online - California Avenue trees get the axe:<p><a href="http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=13827" rel="nofollow">http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=13827</a>

Hmm... tell me again why I would want to live in Silicon Valley?

I don't mind talking about trees.<p>The bigger picture behind this concept is urban planning, which is a huge issue to be fixed in the U.S. (if you want sustainable development).

This might be unconnected, but having just read PG's piece on publishing, and being in the local news business, it seems as though there may have been meetings about this decision? Published in the local newspaper perhaps?<p>At least, most developments and streetscaping projects around here don't go down with at least a (public) city council vote.<p>I'm not sure what my point is... maybe just that I'm curious what the local media coverage of this is/was?

If governments have so much power that they can demolish well loved landmarks in the center of American entrepreneurship, imagine what they can do to a whole state or even country...wait a minute.<p>What needs to happen to save the state and country is the exact opposite of this travesty-entrepreneurs should replace the real deadwood, government on every level.<p><a href="http://lewrockwell.com" rel="nofollow">http://lewrockwell.com</a>

People should be pissed about this for a number of reasons. PG--I suggest putting their phone numbers up. Emails are too easy to ignore.

Plenty of Oak trees still here in Cambridge PG as I'm sure you recall. Just beautiful this time of year. =)<p>I'd miss them if they were gone too.

@earthlink.net for the Mayor? Ouch! He probably has a Flowbee and a Zack Morris bag phone to boot.

Where were the tree sitters at?

Is the old Kirk's hamburger joint still there? Wonderful place.<p>(This is dating me--haven't been back there for 20 years.)

absolutely terrible.