it's a mod, mod, mod, mod world - part 2

And since there’s no such thing as too much mid-century modernism for one week, this evening we attended a presentation (and book-signing) at the Doelger Center here in Westlake, about builder Henry Doelger, Westlake, and the Little Boxes—Daly City mid-century modern houses “made of ticky-tacky” immortalized by Malvina Reynolds and Pete Seeger—that he built here. As I’ve noted previously, we’re now living in a Doelger, the same house that Jeff lived in from birth through third grade.

The book’s author, Rob Keil, gave a great slide presentation about Westlake history and architecture. Afterwards, we got to spend some time chatting with Rob and his partner, Esperanza. We also bought a copy of the gorgeous book (see some photos from the book), which will have to go on our coffee table—well, just as soon as we buy a coffee table.

It was a great evening, and it was nice to meet some cool Westlake folks like Rob and Espie; in the time we’ve been here, we’ve spent most of our time either working, settling in, or with Jeff’s mom, so we haven’t had a chance yet to meet other people here in Daly City, especially more-or-less of our generations; Jeff was by far the youngest person at the presentation at the Daly City/Colma History Guild meeting tonight, and even I was probably in the bottom quartile. Our next-door neighbors are a young couple with two young children, but just as we were finally starting to get to know them, they’ve put their house on the market and plan to move to the East Bay (no causality there, I hope).