The theme of our California trip so far is really reconnecting with old friends, starting with Chula Vista, continuing in Santa Barbara, and then getting into high gear here in the Bay Area,  as we used to live around here. We lived here for over 5 years, in fact — but it’s now been more than twice that, nearly 11 years, since we moved away.

Yikes – can it really have been that long?!

The answer is yes, it can. Which means there’s a reason why other than our friends things around here seem kind of familiar, and yet not so much.   There’s been a lot of construction and changes to existing buildings in the intervening years, and of course a lot of restaurants have changed or gone away completely.  The traffic has gotten worse, and remembering the tricks from 11 years ago to navigating around isn’t alway easy, let alone understanding some of the new traffic patterns.  However, today I did manage to remember (or at least make an educated guess about)  a trick to avoid one of the most congested streets.  Which I couldn’t have done in a totally new place, I guess, so somehow having lived here once upon a time might help.

Yesterday we visited downtown Palo Alto, in order to visit an old haunt, the Stanford Theatre. It’s a refurbished movie palace that for many years has run programs with movies from the golden age of Hollywood. We went regularly when we lived in the area years ago, and it’s fun to see that it’s still in business.  One highlight is hearing the organ played before and after each regular movie, but sometimes they also have silent movies shown with a live musical accompaniment performed on  the organ. That’s what was on the bill on Sunday, with organist Dennis James at the “Mighty Wurlitzer.”  Just like when we’d come years ago,  Mr. James had written a new music score to go with the movie. He’s still quite the master of it; I am always impressed at how he’s able to convey so many moods via his musical arrangements on that organ.

It was a fun afternoon, but in a way a bit odd, as the theatre was the one thing that seemed the most familiar.  The rest of downtown has changed quite a bit and seems very different from when we lived here.  Seeing an old town through new eyes, while going to see an old silent movie with a new musical score.  I’m not sure there’s really any conclusion to be drawn from that, but FWIW, we did both of those things yesterday afternoon in downtown Palo Alto.