In the News

Summer is almost here. But for many Food Bank families, it is an unwelcome break. Summer means the 1 in 3 students who rely on free and reduced-price school meals will suddenly struggle to eat. Give today and your donation will be matched $1 for $1, up to $100,000.

We will have envelopes for donations as well as a barrel for food donations at our Bridge Center on a permanent basis.

The Longest Day is a sunrise-to-sunset event to raise funds to fuel the care, support and research efforts of the Alzheimer’s Association. It will be held nation-wide on June 21, 2013, the longest day of the year. Its one day to honor the passion, dedication and strength displayed by people with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers every day.

We will hold extra games that day. Players will receive 70% sectional rated black points at all games and all sanction fees paid to the ACBL will be donated to the Alzheimers Association. Our Unit is also raising funds for the Alzheimer's Association.

Learn More

Silicon Valley Youth Bridge - Inspiring the next generation of bridge players. Our Unit is developing a Youth Bridge program to attract, teach, train and retain young players.

Learn a little about the IFES. Ever wonder what IFES stands for? Curious about their traditions? Read the nice article about the IFES and their recent Festa parade.

♥ Education

Mentor / Mentee Game (June 16). This is a special game for members of our Mentor program. It will be a separate section held at the same time as our normal Sunday afternoon game. Please sign up by contacting Chuck Lane or Pat Chambers. Mentor Program participants and contact info.

Two Over One (July-August). This intermediate level courseis for bridge players with at least one year of duplicate experience. Our course lecturer is the very popular Frank Smoot who has taught bridge to beginners and beyond in Palo Alto for almost 20 years. Frank and our wonderful volunteers give students individual attention which helps our students learn in a fun environment. Info and Registration

Free Lectures (Tuesday mornings). Our 2012-2013 series is held on selected Tuesday mornings until June 2013. Want to be notified before each lecture? Have friends who would like notification, too? Signup for our email notification. Schedule and info.

Ongoing and upcoming classes - Check our Classes page.

♦ Unit

ACBL Bridge Bulletin online. The ACBL website now has electronic copies of the Bridge Bulletin since January 2005. (4/8)

Help wanted at Unit Games. Our Unit Games have themes with lunches and decorations. Its a lot of work and we could use some help with food, preparation or cleanup. If can help contact Bev Nuding.

♠ Special Games

Please check our Event Calendar for special games, club closures due to holidays and local events, tournaments and other events which are in addition to our normal Game Schedule.

♣ Clubs

Monday Morning. Our biggest game of the week. Reservations are required. We encourage people to carpool or take public transit.

Monday Afternoon. Walter Miller's Think Slam Bridge Club has closed.

Tuesday Afternoon. Has added a new section for players with fewer than 300 masterpoints.

Wednesday Afternoon. Walter Millers game has changed to a 99'er game from a 49'er game.

Wednesday Night. The Doubleton Club now has their own 'blog' providing information about upcoming games, high scores for the month and the ability to sign up for games.

Learn about all our games.

We want your feedback

We'd like to make this your one-stop site for bridge. If you have suggestions for improving our website please email the Webmaster by using the Contact Us - Webmaster link located on every page or provide your comments to Alan Templeton.

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Parking at our Bridge Center

An important message from Unit President Brian Samuels

This message is to solicit your support to help solve an extremely serious problem that is facing us and puts at risk our ability to continue to use our beautiful Bridge Center.

As you are all aware, we do not seem to have enough parking for some of our games - especially Monday, sometimes Friday and occasionally on other days. There are always parking problems when IFES is hosting a large event while we have one of our games.

This week we received a letter from the City of Mountain View warning us that we may be in violation of the Use Permit that IFES has to allow them to rent our Bridge Center to us. This agreement is with the City of Mountain View and prohibits us, and anyone else who uses the IFES center, from parking on the street. So, we are not allowed to park on Stierlin Rd. or on any of the other side streets.

Unfortunately, there are neighbors who are monitoring our compliance with this agreement. These neighbors are taking photographs of any violating cars and sending them to the City of Mountain View Planning Department. For repeated violations the city has the right to withdraw the IFES Use Permit, which would mean we would not be able to use our new Bridge Center. Also, at some point in the future, the Use Permit will have to be renewed and a history of violations accompanied by the testimony of unhappy neighbors would be a disaster for us.

You may park only in the following 2 areas:

The IFES parking lot. Please note that there is a lot of additional parking on the north side of the building (Shoreline Blvd. side) and some at the rear of the building. Most people are not aware of these spaces. Please use them. Also, please be courteous and park parallel in your spot so that it will be easy for cars to park on either side of you.
There is one small exception to us not being allowed to park on the street and that is we can park on our side of Stierlin Rd but ONLY between our 2 driveways. No other street parking is allowed.

Please start to carpool so that we can reduce the number of parking spaces we need!

We have formed a committee with the objectives to get this problem solved and eliminate any risk that we will lose our Bridge Center because of parking violations. The committee members are: Mike Atherton, Alan Cummings, Sue Griswold and Alan Templeton. This committee will be coming up with additional actions, recommendations and communications to help us all participate in solving this problem. Please feel free to speak with me or any of these people if you have any suggestions, comments or questions.

In the meantime, we need your absolute compliance with the parking guidelines above.

I am very proud to be the new Unit 503 President. Thank you very much for supporting me and all of your 2013 Board members. We are looking forward to serving you and the best interests of bridge in our Unit. On behalf of your Board, I would like to wish you and your families a Happy Holiday and a happy and healthy 2013, filled with lots of challenging and fun bridge.

Thank you for your help and cooperation.

Brian

Brian Samuels
briansamuels@yahoo.com (650) 703-9510

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Carpooling to Our Games

As Unit President Brian Samuels has stated, we have a serious parking problem at our Bridge Center for some of our games - in particular Monday mornings and the third Wednesday morning of the month when there is a large event in the main hall. One of the ways we can reduce parking on the street is to increase the number of people who carpool.

Most people make arrangements for carpooling directly with their friends but if you'd like to see who else is available to carpool, or add your name to the list of available people, we have updated the carpool system on our website to better support this.

Please take a few minutes to look at our updated carpool system so you are aware of what it can do. Being new, there are only a couple of people listed but we hope that will grow as more people learn about it. To get to our new carpool system use the Games - Carpools & Public Transit link on every page.

The information on our website will also be available at our Bridge Center.