The Best of Castro Valley is in Its Blogs

This digest showcases the best of Castro Valley's bloggers this week.

The Valley Blues Festival this year reduced its overall price and offered a discount for Patch readers. Hurry up and get your tickets. The event is this Saturday, Sept. 17.

Steve Ontiveros gives those details and more. Click on the link above or click here to learn more.

Here's an excerpt:

The money raised through last year’s Valley Blues Festival allowed us to fund a wide variety of causes throughout Castro Valley, including Castro Valley schools, youth sports, performing arts and activities, FESCO Emergency Shelter, Castro Valley Library, Rowell Ranch Rodeo Parade and Chili Cook-Off, Eden Medical Center Foundation and International Projects such as Polio Eradication, Haiti Earthquake Relief, Library Construction in Belize, Demining mine fields in Croatia and hosting International Exchange Professionals from Brazil, as well as many more worthy causes.

To build on last year’s great success, we took the feedback from sponsors and audience members and made a few changes to further enhance the experience. Here are the two most important: We will be reducing our ticket price ($10 in advance, $15 at the gate) to make it affordable for more people to attend the event. We will be involving Save Our Schools Castro Valley and the Castro Valley Sports Foundation.

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Ken Martin gave a full review of the Fall Festival held last weekend in a temporary location near the Castro Valley Library and BART station, instead of its usual location near Castro Village Shopping Center and Castro Valley Boulevard.

Many are saying they liked the temporary location better than the traditional one and would prefer to continue there. Click on the link above or click here to find out what Ken didn't like quite as well. What would you add?

Here's an excerpt:

Covering the entire event seemed to require more walking than when the festival was on the Boulevard. A visitor might want to first visit the Beck's Shoes booth and acquire a good pair of walking shoes! Much walking leads to a need for rest. A nice addition to the Festival might be benches or chairs placed in strategic rest areas throughout the show. As it stands now the only seating that one can use to stop and rest is located in the food area.

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Thomas Coates reports that the CV Bandits and Mr. Fantasy have pulled ahead in the first week of the CV Patch Fantasy Football League.

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David Ashton collected stories from 17 Castro Valley residents on his popular CV Legends fan page on Facebook and packaged them as a Castro Valley tribute to local memories of Sept. 11, 2001. For more, click on the link in the previous sentence or click here.

Here's one excerpt:

Josh Hunter: "I think it might also be nice to remember September 12. That feels like the last time we as a whole nation were united about anything."

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You can also get tipped off when a new blog is published by following Castro Valley Patch on Facebook at www.facebook.com/castrovalleypatch or on Twitter at twitter.com/#!/CValleyPatch.

In the future, Patch hopes to include fresh blog posts in the automated newsletter than arrives in your mail box just after 6 each morning. It also includes a few featured items from the calendar.

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