Capers restaurant in Campbell celebrates 25th anniversary

It was hard to find a seat at Capers Eat & Drink in Campbell on Thursday afternoon as a big crowd showed up to celebrate the restaurant and bar’s 25th anniversary.

Owner Kam Ravazi was all smiles as he greeted customers, including Campbell Mayor Sergio Lopez and members of the city council who stopped by with a proclamation to mark the impressive milestone.

“This is like my personal version of Cheers,” Ravazi said, referring to the fictional Boston TV bar “where everybody knows your name.” “I must know 80 percent of the customers by name.”

Ravazi self-deprecatingly credits everyone but himself for the restaurant’s quarter-century of endurance. “We’ve been blessed with great employees, great customers and even great landlords,” he said.

Between Capers and its sister restaurant the Loft in downtown San Jose — which has been around for 21 years — said he’s still working seven days a week, just not 14-hour days like he did in the beginning. “You get up every morning and you love what you do,” he said.

Campbell City Councilmember Terry Hines, who shared a table Thursday with Councilmember Anne Bybee and Vice Mayor Dan Furtado, said he loves the sports vibe created by Sharks and Warriors jerseys, 49ers helmets and photographs, and a huge mural of a San Francisco Giants player stealing home. “It’s a great showing to see a full house here today,” he said.

Ravazi says he’s grateful to have two places that have survived both the COVID-19 pandemic, economic downturns and the work-from-home revolution that’s decimated lunch crowds throughout the Bay Area. “I’ve had a lot of friends who have closed recently,” he said. “It’s not a friendly environment for restaurants right now.”

At least it’s still friendly inside Capers.

PALO ALTO MUSEUM NAMES CEO: As the Palo Alto Museum moves closer to opening, it’s added a big part to its future by hiring Marguerite Gong Hancock as its inaugural president and CEO.

Hancock, who most recently was chief innovation officer and vice president of programming at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, should be a great fit for the museum, which is on track to open next year. She’s a Palo Alto native who worked at Stanford for two decades, raised her family — with husband Russ Hancock of Joint Venture Silicon Valley — in the city and co-founded the Christmas Crèche exhibit, a tradition in Palo Alto since 1987.

Hancock said in a statement that she’s excited to bring the Palo Alto Museum to life. “Palo Alto’s enduring spirit of big ideas, innovation, and impact shines through Stanford University, bold social movements, the ongoing digital revolution, and countless other stories,” she said. “Rooted in Palo Alto and connected to the world, the museum will be both a welcoming community space for all and a powerful platform—to honor the past, challenge the present, and imagine a better future together.”

If you’ve been following along, you know the Palo Alto Museum will be housed in the Roth Building, a 20,000 square-foot Spanish Colonial Revival landmark structure that’s nearly a century old. The former site of the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, the building has undergone a $14 million renovation. Thoits Bros., a property management company with deep Palo Alto roots, provided a $1 million gift to fund Hancock’s hire.

TRANSFORMATIONAL GIFT: Silicon Valley businesswoman and philanthropist Louise de Putron has donated $1 million to Pivotal, the San Jose-based nonprofit that works to ensure to future of young people in and recently aged-out of the foster care system. The  gift will support Pivotal’s coaching and scholarship programs over the next three years and also establish a new fund to support the mental and emotional well-being of foster care youth in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

Pivotal CEO Matt Bell said the nonprofit is honored to be among de Putron’s beneficiaries and considers it a “vote of confidence” in their work.  “Her donation will have a tremendous impact on the scholars we serve,” he said.

FAREWELL TO A SPECIAL SCHOOL: Former students, staff and family members gathered at Chandler Tripp School in San Jose in late June for a farewell/reunion to the school, which had served special needs children since 1949. The school’s lease on Santa Clara County property on Thornton Way near Santa Clara Valley Medical Center recently expired, and its programs are being relocated to other Santa Clara County Office of Education sites, drawing a close a legacy that lasted more than 75 years.

Kathy Bays — a retired special education manager at the Office of Education — organized the event, which included lots of alumni and former teachers including Sylvia Chinn and Joe Fimiani, whose first teaching job in the 1970s was at Chandler Tripp. Former Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools Colleen Wilcox also attended and said the program was “incredibly touching,” with former students and principals speaking.

The school was founded in 1949 and named for Chandler Clinton Tripp, who — according to a 1949 Mercury Herald article — suffered from polio when he was a student at Roosevelt Junior High but went on to graduate from San Jose State, where he used a wheelchair. He later opened a library at the Tenth Street Pharmacy on Santa Clara Street but died about a month before the school bearing his name opened. The original class of 30 physically disabled students — mostly with cerebral palsy — arrived on the campus, then on 33rd Street next to Anne Darling Elementary School, in a special bus and the school’s station wagon. It moved to Thornton Way in the mid-1960s.

“More and more students were transitioned into local junior highs and high schools and most graduated from high school and many went on to college,” Wilcox said.

TWO WRITERS AT TWO DECADES: Metro weekly columnist Gary Singh and I both started writing our respective columns in 2005, which led James Leventhal, executive director of San Jose’s Institute of Contemporary Art, to invite us to discuss what it’s been like writing about this place we call home for 20 years.

We’ll be gabbing away July 24 at the ICA gallery at 560 S. First St. from 5 to 7 p.m., around the same time the weekly Pobladores Night Market is getting going in the park right outside the ICA’s doors. You can RSVP at www.icasanjose.org.