A Brief History Lesson

I have heard more stories about downtown LG than I can remember. As with most good folk tales, I have a hard time distinguishing the blurred line between fact and rumor. Some of my favorites...

The Pet Rock Guy: Spend more than 10 minutes inside Carry Nation's and someone will mention that it is owned by the guy that invented the pet rock. I've never really doubted this but I have wondered how this came to be. It turns out that Gary Dahl was able to make a million dollars selling pebbles for four bucks a pop in 1975. Call him a snake oil salesman or Silicon Valley's first real entrepreneur, but that was a feat of advertising genius that may never be matched.

Old Town Theater: Once upon a time, when Old Town Theater was still actually a theater and not a Borders, I actually participated in a few productions there. Word around backstage was that the older mezzanine level of the theater was haunted. Now, I mostly blew this off thinking that it was a ploy by the staff to keep us kids out of what was probably a somewhat unsafe area, but it turns out that other people have heard this too.

Trevese Restaurant aka the Chart House aka the big house on North Santa Cruz: Regardless of how great the food, Los Gatos natives all know that whatever occupies 115 N. Santa Cruz Ave. is destined to fail because the place used to be a mortuary. Now do businesses fail at this location because it is haunted, or because the thought of having a romantic dinner in a mortuary creeps people out? Who knows.