After 38 years of living on N. Almenar Drive in Greenbrae, U.S. Senator
Barbara Boxer recently sold her home and
bought a condo in Oakland.
I asked her if she had any favorite Marin
restaurants that no longer exist today.
She says, "I remember there was a Swensen's
Ice Cream parlor right near Petrini's market
(which is now Mollie Stone's in Greenbrae's
Bon Air Center). When they closed it I really
cried about it. Now that I've moved away, they
just opened a new Ben & Jerry's restaurant
there... Twenty years too late!!!"
Ice Cream aside, Boxer's other favorite Marin
hangout was the bike bath around the Corte
Madera Creek where she often jogged . She
says, "People still say to me 'We really miss
you on the bike path and I say to them, 'My
ghost is still jogging there.'"
Years ago she was instrumental in helping save
the marshland for public use before it was
almost turned into residential development.
"They actually filled it in," she says, "but we
turned it back. We were one of the very first
wetland restorations."
"That's my favorite spot in Marin," she says.
"Because, to me, it has so many memories.
One, because it's beautiful and I can see the
mountain from there. But, two, it represents the
power of our community to get together and
preserve beauty and quality of life and bring
back a natural habitat like a wetland..." Boxer
says that when she became a Grandma that
was the first place she took her grandson.
The Senator first moved to Marin in 1967 when
she was 27. "We came here for the schools,"
she says, "And we were never disappointed."
