November 2017

When Nook Sales Experts match a buyer with their dream home, the only thing as important as architectural style is the neighborhood. This week’s #NookNeighborhood story highlights the best of the holiday spirit in our favorite nooks.

The Bay Area

• Dance-Along “Nutcrackers of the Caribbean”. Saturday, December 9 & Sunday, December 10. If you need more information than that, I just don’t know your definition of fun. The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band presents a parody version of The Nutcracker for you, with selected times the audience joins in the fray.

• WinterFest at California’s Great America. Through December 30. For a relatively new holiday tradition, WinterFest has gotten pretty huge. Starting at the Christmas tree, one of

Here at Nook, we have a passion for people, places and properties. There is a reason that we say people first, for what makes a neighborhood special if not the people who live there? Welcome to #TastemakerTuesday, where we’ll feature the visionaries in our favorite nooks who are dedicated to building a better community through their talents.

Often our vision of opera is stuffy and set apart from the environment and community where it is presented. It holds a classical, historical, and old feeling, one that rarely speaks to anything on our minds today. There are standouts in the Nook Neighborhoods to be sure, like 2017 MacArthur Fellow Yuval Sharon’s site-specific L.A. based company The Industry, or Opera Parallèle’s political work in San Francisco, but

On Wednesday we brought you the ultimate list of Black Friday deals in our Nook Neighborhoods. Although we appreciate the prestige and economic boost that a high-end shopping center brings to an area, the life and blood of our favorite places is found in the Mom and Pops, the small business.

Even a large company like American Express understands the importance of small businesses, and that is why they started Small Business Saturday in 2010. During the recession, American Express saw how much the state of the economy hurt small businesses. In just two years, all 50 states participated in the initiative that is not a holiday shopping tradition.

The slogan is Shop Small, and it is meant to shine a focus on gifts you can give that mean as much to the

When Nook Sales Experts match a buyer with their dream home, the only thing as important as architectural style is the neighborhood. That’s why we’re bringing you the #NookNeighborhoods series, where every Wednesday you’ll find cool history and culture to make sure you don’t overlook an area that could have the best nook for you.

Black Friday’s origin can be traced back to the 1950s, when the journal Factory Management and Maintenance used the term to describe traffic congestion due to the onslaught of the holiday shopping season. It didn’t catch on as a phenomenon until the mid 1990s; retailer accounts made it clear that the day after Thanksgiving is the day they turn a profit for the first time all year, or get “in the black” versus “in the red.” The

Here at Nook, we have a passion for people, places and properties. There is a reason that we say people first, for what makes a neighborhood special if not the people who live there? Welcome to #TastemakerTuesday, where we’ll feature the visionaries in our favorite nooks who are dedicated to building a better community through their talents.

The meaning of Thanksgiving has morphed over the years, but two constants remain: food and family. I’m not exactly the kind of person to spend years perfecting my grandmother’s stuffing recipe, and I don’t really have the patience for cooking a turkey. The first time I ever had to make Thanksgiving dinner myself, I had my mother and aunt on speed dial for advice. And I won’t even get into the gymnastics involved to

Christmas music is upon us, and I bet you’ve already heard Bing Crosby’s White Christmas quite a few times while ordering the holiday blend in your favorite Nook Neighborhood cafe. Crosby’s rendition of the Irving Berlin classic holds no equal in tearful and nostalgic dreams of our ideal wintertime. When first performed on a radio program on Christmas Day in 1941, his audience was held in a mournful stasis: earlier that month, the United States had entered WWII with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Draft notices were on their way for many of our nation’s youth. Even though the mournful melody became a staple on Crosby’s popular USO tours, he always hesitated to sing it, he said in an interview. “Heaven knows, I didn’t come that far to make them sad. For this

When Nook Sales Experts match a buyer with their dream home, the only thing as important as architectural style is the neighborhood. That’s why we’re bringing you the #NookNeighborhoods series, where every Wednesday you’ll find cool history and culture to make sure you don’t overlook an area that could have the best nook for you.

I’m a sucker for a nook with an active twitter account. You can learn a lot about a neighborhood from a personality-based social media platform, and @BalboaPark does a great job. It’s a trove of both tourist and resident treasures, allowing anyone to drop into Balboa Park for an afternoon or day without much planning. With such a gorgeous area nearly completely covered by trees, it’s easy to just lay back and enjoy the extra

Here at Nook, we have a passion for people, places and properties. There is a reason that we say people first, for what makes a neighborhood special if not the people who live there? Welcome to #TastemakerTuesday, where we’ll feature the visionaries in our favorite nooks who are dedicated to building a better community through their talents.

Normally we cover great names in architecture, design or take the term “tastemaker” literally and bring a local restaurant or brewery to your attention. This week, however, we found someone quite different to profile. When you see Benjamin Adelmann’s contribution to the interior of this Sherman Oaks home, you’ll immediately understand. Following the midcentury ideal of letting the outside in, Adelman’s paintings

She’s the Mother of Balboa Park, named for both an elementary school in Pacific Beach and park in Mount Soledad; the first woman to receive the prestigious Frank N. Meyer medal from the American Genetic Association. She is a Trailblazer, according to the Women’s Museum of California when she was inducted into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame in 2006. She quite literally brought the “park” to Balboa Park, then named City Park. She is Kate Sessions.

While running a successful business and gaining her national reputation as a horticulture expert, Sessions leased land from the city to build her nursery. In addition to the 100 trees a year planted at “City Park,” historians can now point to more than 300 trees across the city that she planted as

When Nook Sales Experts match a buyer with their dream home, the only thing as important as architectural style is the neighborhood. That’s why we’re bringing you the #NookNeighborhoods series, where every Wednesday you’ll find cool history and culture to make sure you don’t overlook an area that could have the best nook for you.

Is Carmel-by-the-Sea a real place, or just one I imagined? First there’s the dog-friendliness of the entire town. Pets are allowed as a rule, not an exception. Most patios, stores, hotels, beaches -- all those wonderful places that provide biodegradable bags, snacks and water along every path. The original intent for making it so dog-friendly was based on a pretty solid premise: “If you travel with your dog, they’re probably