Bakers, beekeepers and…the Wu Tang Clan? It’s the 650 Year in Photos!!

by THE SIX FIFTY staff January 2, 2020 1931 Views

Engaging imagery from around the Peninsula in 2019.

A man uses a MacBook Pro to stay dry during a rainy day in downtown Mountain View ,in January. (Photo by Magali Gauthier)

It’s a very VERY visual world out there.

A protester in a “handmaid” costume, an allusion to the novel and Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” keeps “Baby Trump” grounded until the group is ready to launch it into the sky above Portola Valley during a visit by President Donald Trump to the area on September 17. (Photo by Sammy Dallal)

And as you may already know, we here at The Six Fifty have long been obsessive image-aficionados (…fanatical photo-philes?), so we were excited to take a quick snap-of-the-shutter moment to compose a visual spread of our favorite images that we created over the past 365.

With this in mind, we reached out to our cohorts and collaborators (and frequent 650 contributors) at the Palo Alto Weekly, Mountain View Voice and Menlo Almanac to collectively compile the top notch imagery from their coverage of the Mid-Peninsula with our wider reach of the greater 6–5-0 (ish) area code.

The result is, in our humble opinion, an engaging reflection of this lively and colorful (and at times—entirely confounding) place that we live: high profile politics, monster waves, wide ranging micro-cultures and maybe even a bit of this trend known as “tech.”

So take a moment to share our visual values with these local shots by our local photographers….

Clockwise from top: Speaker Nancy Pelosi discusses women in leadership at an event held at NASA Ames Research Center in August; Menlo School sixth grader Niko Madriz looks up at the American flag as he shakes hands with World War II veteran Bob Williams; Elli, a second-grader at Oak Knoll Elementary School, sports a Team USA hat during a school assembly in which students heard Tierna Davidson, a U.S. women’s soccer team player, speak in November; A marcher is silhouetted behind an American flag during a May Day March in Mountain View on May 1. (Photos by Magali Gauthier)

Bales of aluminum cans ready to be sold to domestic buyers at the Sunnyvale SMaRT station. (Photo by Veronica Weber)

Clockwise from top: Local surfer Bianca Valenti catches a massive wave at the Mavericks break, near Pillar Point Harbor. Valenti joined other notable female surfers in striving for equal treatment within their sport; Angel More, a senior at Menlo School and a decorated long-distance swimmer, practices in her school’s pool. She has conquered marathons in Sweden, South Africa, Chile and England, to name a few. In 2018, More completed a 21.3-mile swim across Lake Tahoe. Paired with her previous swimmings of the Santa Barbara and Catalina channels, this made her her the youngest person by far to complete the California Triple Crown of marathon swimming. And in August 2019, she successfully swam the 28 miles around Manhattan Island (her longest swim yet); A Harlem Flying Globie corkscrews in the air off of a trampoline during a break in the game, at the SAP in January; In 2019, Paris Harrell, 15, was the only female member of Mountain View High School’s wrestling team. Pictured, she sits with her teammates watching a fight against Homestead High School at a home meet in Mountain View, California, in January.(Photos by Katie “KZ” Zacarian, Magali Gauthier & Adam Pardee)

Palo Alto resident Rowena Chiu was one of many women to come forward this year with allegations that well-known Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein attempted to sexual assault her. The incident occurred when Chiu was his 24-year-old assistant in 1998. (Photo by Magali Gauthier)

Clockwise from top: Todd Novak (behind counter with guitar) helps a customer who has come in to Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto with a need of repair. The long-running local music shop celebrated its 50th anniversary this past summer; *Nina Loschiavo, a member of* The Bawdy Caste, a volunteer shadow cast that specializes in screen-accurate renditions of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, *shows off her fake eyelashes that mimic her character Magenta’s striking ones before a midnight screening of* the movie at the Landmark Guild Theatre in Menlo Park on April 6. Loschiavo *explains the cast’s goal is to be as screen-accurate as possible ;* Danielle Fafchamps demonstrates how she uses red iron oxide, and other natural pigments, to dye the clay in her studio at her home in Portola Valley; Alphabeat’s Paul Miller performs “Good Things Come to Those Who Wait” by Nathan Sykes during Techapella rehearsal at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City. (Photos by Magali Gauthier)

Cosplay dance party: fans party it up at the annual Silicon Valley Comic Con Convention this past summer. (Photo by Dan Fenstermacher)

Hip Hop legends the Wu-Tang Clan played an a high profile show at Shoreline Amphitheatre this past summer to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their seminal album “*Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).”(*Clockwise from top left:) RZA, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Raekwon. (Photos by Danny Acosta).

Erica Ryan rolls a croissant at The Midwife and the Baker’s baking facility in Mountain View on June 20, 2019. (Photo by Magali Gauthier)

Clockwise from top: Eilir Bjorlin and Jillian Scott, students at Oak Knoll Elementary School, participate in a climate strike protest on September 20; girl holds her baby cousin in the RV they share with 10 family members; Lucia plays with a friend on the monkey bars at Mountain View Parent Nursery School in March. The school celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019; Children fill cups and pipettes with purple-colored water at the water play tables at the then-new Menlo Park City School District’s preschool, the Early Learning Center. (Photos by Magali Gauthier)

The playground and some classrooms at Jose Antonio Vargas Elementary, as seen during the day and night. A dispute between PG&E and a Mountain View homeowners’ association over an easement left the new school without power for four months. Vargas was running on a backup gas generator during daytime hours; however, the elevator in the two-story classroom building couldn’t be powered by the generator. (Photo by Magali Gauthier)

Clockwise from top: San Jose resident Neil Catic searches for the best chestnuts out of his harvest from the Skyline Chestnut farms nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains; DJ Bully Demise scours KFJC’s vinyl library, thumbing through the tens of thousands of records at the station. She takes an open-ended approach, grabbing whatever catches her eye; A Union soldier cleans his musket during a big two-day Civil War re-enactment in Half Moon Bay this past November; Silicon Valley Bike Exchange volunteers fix up some bikes at the nonprofit’s new headquarters in Palo Alto in January. (Photo by Sammy Dallal, Magali Gauthier, & Dan Fenstermacher.)

From left: One expo-goer gets a good look at a colorful chameleon during a reptile convention at the Cow Palace in Daly City; Burlingame beekeeper Bob Silverstein looks over his bounty of honey. Peninsula beekeepers have split in recent years over how to address a deadly mite infestation attacking their hives. (Photos by Amar Dillon & Philip Wartena)

Robyn Diamond (right) during a down moment during a stunt motorcycle meet-up in Oakland, this past spring. Diamond, a Santa Clara resident, has gained notoriety for her acrobatic (and at times, nerve-wracking) stunt riding, garnering her a big Instagram following and a spot in a Taylor Swift music video. (Photo by Jason Backrack)

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Bakers, beekeepers and…the Wu Tang Clan? It’s the 650 Year in Photos!!

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THE SIX FIFTY staff

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