Category Archives: Monterey Herald

Rappa’s Closed

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City is against consolidation.

The Monterey City Council on Tuesday will consider taking final action to deny the transfer of a wharf lease for Rappa’s Seafood Restaurant from Anthony Rappa to would-be buyer James Gilbert, who has three other wharf restaurants.

Rappa, who has been running the restaurant since 1980, said Thursday that he hopes the council decides otherwise.

“What they are doing is counterproductive,” said Rappa, who at age 79 wants to retire. He said Gilbert has the money to make badly needed improvements to the property, along with plans to make it a “destination location.”

The restaurant sits in a good location near the end of the wharf, with a second-level observation deck overlooking the harbor.

Rappa’s Closed

Estates on the Bay Guilty Of Fraud

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Beware of who you deal with.

Wills found the pair engaged in fraudulent business practices, including loan fraud, and imposed a civil penalty of $120,425 and victim restitution of $29,575.

The case came to officials’ attention after an elderly woman filed a complaint, prosecutors said.

Investigators found Silva and Gobert knowingly falsified the woman’s income information on two loan applications.

She lost her home after the brokers signed her up for two adjustable-rate mortgage loans that she couldn’t afford to repay on her limited income, prosecutors said.

Silva’s real estate broker license was revoked by the Bureau of Real Estate in 2004 for loan fraud, but she continued to act as a broker until 2010.

Estates on the Bay Guilty Of Fraud

Peppers Mexicali Cafe So Hot It Catches On Fire

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Clean those grease filters!

Jim Brown, a division chief for the Monterey Fire Department, said the fire broke out in a flue designed to carry exhaust and grease away from the stove at Peppers.

“Those flues can get a buildup of grease inside, and sometimes the grease catches fire, which is what happened today,” Brown said. “The initial knockdown of the fire was from the outside of the restaurant, and we actually cut the flue pipe open to get to the seed of the fire.”

Peppers Mexicali Cafe So Hot It Catches On Fire

No Butts On The Wharf

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Smokers abusing their freedom by littering get what’s coming.

Chart House Butts
Picture from 2012, empty lot just over fence from Chart House

In December, Fisherman’s Wharf will join the list of city spots where lighting up is illegal.

The City Council this week, at the request of the wharf business association, voted 5-0 to ban smoking on the tourist-oriented wharf.

The association voted 26-6 in favor of the smoking ban, and no one spoke in opposition to the move before the City Council. City officials also are investigating whether to expand its no-smoking areas to downtown areas.

No Butts On The Wharf

Stuart Elder In Court

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Elevated to celebrity status.

On Friday, he rushed in and out of the courthouse, his lawyer at his side.

Elder’s Bakersfield attorney Michael Lukehart told the judge he will ask the court to ban the press from using “electronic media — filming, recording or photographing” at the proceedings, noting that TV crews were filming as he spoke.

Judge Russell Scott said he had already granted permission for cameras to roll at the arraignment.

Stuart Elder In Court

Tom Fruit-Cheese Giving Away The City Part 4

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P.G. has lost its fire department, police department, Mvsevm, the land under the fish prison and now is throwing out the golf course, cemetery and public works department.

What about contracting out the City Manager position?

Curb Alert Free PG

City Manager Thomas Frutchey will ask the City Council on Wednesday to seek proposals for six different jobs, including managing the Pacific Grove Golf Links.

In a council report, Frutchey says that while the city is responsible for providing the services, “it does not follow that the city itself is always best able to provide those services.”

Contracting out the services would likely lay off city workers, but the city is encouraging employee groups to prepare their own proposals, the report says.

Tom Fruit-Cheese Giving Away The City Part 4

Man Burned To Death At Crespi Pond

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Was the pond dry as it is today? (11/9)

Crespi Restrooms

Pacific Grove police have identified Richard Haffner as the man killed Sunday at Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Course after they found him engulfed in flames. Police would not release any more details as of Monday afternoon.

Police are investigating the death of a man they found engulfed in flames Sunday morning at the Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Course.

Employees in the golf course’s restaurant and pro shop saw the man in flames running in the area of the stone restroom near Crespi Pond and the tees of the 17th hole on Ocean View Boulevard about 7:20 a.m.

Numerous calls to Pacific Grove police and the Monterey Fire Department reported a man and building on fire. Police arrived first and found the man and a fence outside the bathroom on fire. An officer immediately extinguished the flames but the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

Man Burned To Death At Crespi Pond

Measure G – Another School Tax To Refuse

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Aint there enough tax dollars going toward things that are not basic education? Parking lots, football stadiums, district offices and now give tablet computers to every student?

This is just another example of the kind of thinking that leads to an appalling waste of tax dollars like spending $6.8 million on a refurbished sports stadium. And now they want to buy iPads for every student? PGUSD does not need new iPads for every student. Oh, and by the way, what percent of students in the school district don’t already have iPads? Does the school district even know? Does it care?

The fact that this is how they are thinking of spending Measure G money demonstrates that they cannot be trusted to use your tax dollars wisely. It should be an easy call for every voter to reject Measure G.

Residents on the Monterey side of David Avenue support it . .
Measure G In Monterey

Measure G – Another School Tax To Refuse

Favaloros Re-Opens

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I’m all choked up…

Will the fights go on?

Nino and Marie Favaloro stand side by side at the stove in their aprons, stirring, in steady dignity, as their son John brings us to say goodnight. They look up, full of graciousness, not stopping stirring. They are still cooking for a restaurant that is full of diners at 9p.m., and was full when we walked in at 7:30.

This feeling of family pervades the restaurant that has served classic Italian on Lighthouse Avenue for going on 20 years — minus its time under a spell like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, in which a fire caused them to be closed for 18 months. Not 100 years, but it felt to everyone, loyal patrons included, that long.

Favaloros Re-Opens