Home Care In Redwood City, CA

Planning a trip? You can apply for a U.S. passport in person at a rare event in northern California.

A passport acceptance fair will be held in Redwood City, according to the U.S. Department of State.

Such events offer a “personalized experience,” especially for adults and children getting their passports for the first time, the State Department said on its website.

Here’s what to know.

Why do I need a US passport or California Real ID?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security requires people to have a federally approved document — such as a passport or a Real ID driver’s license — on hand for domestic plane travel.

California’s Real ID requirement went into effect in May.

You need the special state-issued identification card to board domestic airplane flights, as well as access federal facilities and nuclear power plants, the Department of Homeland Security said on its website.

The law applies to everyone age 18 years or older, according to the federal agency.

When and where is northern California passport fair in 2025?

An appointment-only passport fair will be held Tuesday, Aug. 12 at Redwood City Main Post Office, 1100 Broadway in Redwood City.

The event runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.

It takes less than two hours to drive from Sacramento to Redwood City, according to Google Maps, while the drive from Modesto to the Mateo County community is about an hour and a half by car.

Driving from Merced to Redwood City would take about two hours, Google Maps said.

Do I need an appointment?

Yes, you’ll need an appointment to participate in the Redwood City passport fair.

You can book an appointment online at tools.usps.com.

Who is eligible to get a US passport? What do you need to apply?

To be eligible to get a U.S. passport, you must be either:

To apply for a passport, you’ll need:

Passport photos must be color photos taken in the past six months. You can find a full list of photo requirements online at travel.state.gov.

How much do passport processing fees cost?

If you’re age 16 or older and applying for a passport for the first time, you can expect to pay an application fee of $30 for a passport card or $130 for a passport book, according to the State Department.

The application fee for a passport card and book is $160.

In all cases, you’ll also need to pay an pay $35 for an acceptance fee, plus

Children under 16 must pay $35 for an acceptance fee, plus $15 for a passport card, $100 for a passport book or $115 for both.

What’s the price to renew my passport?

If you’re 16 or older, you can renew your passport by mail or online for $30 for a passport card, $130 for a passport book or $160 for both.

How quickly can I get my passport?

According to the U.S. State Department’s website, it can take about four to six weeks to process your passport application — or two to three weeks for expedited service. That doesn’t include mailing times.

If you need a passport for “urgent travel in less than two weeks,” the federal agency said, make an appointment at a passport agency or center.

You can use the Online Passport Status System to check your application status if you applied by mail or in person,” the federal agency said.

Call the National Passport Information Center toll-free at 877-487-2778 for more information.

You can find application forms, instructions and information about fees online at usps.com/passport or travel.state.gov/passport.

A local expert revealed how to enjoy summer sports without landing in the ER.

REDWOOD CITY, CA — An orthopedic surgeon with Dignity Health Medical Group – Sequoia shared his advice with Patch to warn parents and summer enthusiasts about potential injuries during peak activity months.

Dr. Neal Berger said trampolines top the list of dangerous summer activities.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against home trampolines, but Dr. Berger offered safety guidelines for those who choose to use them: only one child at a time, use an enclosure, and avoid rowdy behavior or complex moves like flips.

Dr. Berger told Patch the most common summer injuries he sees on trampolines are wrist fractures in children, ACL tears in adults, sprains, strains, bruises and contusions.

Summer activities like skateboarding, surfing and biking also come with their own risks.

The key is controlling speed, Dr. Berger told Patch.

"The faster you are, the greater the risk of serious injury," he told Patch. “In the winter, when I get a skiing or snowboarding injury that requires surgery, I always ask, ‘How fast were you going?’ And the answer is always ‘Fast.’ It's simple physics,”

For new athletes, he recommends starting small and gradually building skills.

Specific safety tips include:

Dr. Berger noted an uptick in injuries during summer, particularly skateboarding incidents and falls among older adults.

"There's more activity in the summer, and so there's more opportunity for injury," Dr. Berger told Patch.

He emphasized that awareness and caution can significantly reduce the risk of serious injury. For those enjoying San Mateo County's abundant outdoor activities, Dr. Berger's advice is simple: have fun but stay safe.

Dr. Berger, an avid surfer himself, had advice specifically for surfers:

Dr. Berger has been practicing as an orthopedic surgeon for 11 years, including six at Dignity Health. He is originally from Philadelphia but came to visit his brother in San Francisco and fell in love with the Bay Area.

Is CA gas tax responsible for much higher gas prices here compared to other states? Let’s use those brain cells for good.

“The gasoline excise tax is a specific tax levied on the purchase of gasoline, primarily to fund transportation infrastructure projects such as road and bridge construction and maintenance.” [US Energy Information Administration]

According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Federal Gasoline Excise Tax is $0.184 per gallon and $0.244 for diesel fuel. This includes a minimal $0.001 for Leaking Underground Storage Tanks (LUST). On top of that, the average state taxes total adds $0.3261 for gasoline and $0.3476 for diesel fuel. So far, the facts.

America seems on a path of De-Intellectualization. This time, the plan here is to teach some critical thinking, which, according to AI-pessimists, will soon be a lost art. According to social-media-realists, it might already be too late.

Let’s look at claims often promoted by the fossil fuel lobby. As the story goes, California’s gasoline is so expensive because California is a small island state with a specialized “Boutique Blend” requiring the World’s cleanest gasoline, which no one else can produce. That’s what we are paying for.

The fact is, Californians do pay more for a gallon of gasoline than most of the other states, except maybe Hawaii. A quick look at AAA’s gas price report shows that in August 2025, the list looks something like this:

The US used to be good, even leading in doing Cost-Benefit-Analysis (CBA). Lobbyists changed that, so no jurisdiction around here seems to be doing CBAs for Transportation anymore. Instead, the industry lobby groups seem to be pushing the narrative of the Horrendously High CA Gas Tax. And most news reporters will just repeat that same story for clickbait. Few seem to be fact checking and are just repeating common narratives.

But is a higher CA Gasoline Excise Tax really explaining the higher cost in California?

Other States with Special Blends:

Critical Thinking:

Turns out California is not the only state with a special blend. Many states have different blends as well. And many of those states or areas are smaller and might not even have their own in-state refineries like CA.

Is the CA blend really so much more complex and so much more expensive to mix than these others? Is it so rare and so much cleaner that no one else can produce it the same way?

CA is a very small area requiring a very special “Boutique Blend” of gasoline which can only be produced by very few in-state refineries.

Critical Thinking:

Suddenly, economies of scale don’t seem to matter anymore. In some stories, California is this small isolated stretch of land where only a very special type of gasoline is used, which makes the production and transportation so much more expensive.

Now this might sound like a story that fits for island states like Hawaii or Puerto Rico. But this is California on the mainland. It likes to call itself the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world, which also makes it the fourth or fifth largest gasoline consumer. It has its own oil production and in-state refinery capacity. How special can a blend be if everyone in the fourth-largest economy is using that blend?

But wait, there is more. As it turns out, Arizona and Nevada are getting their gasoline also from California refineries. At least within the environment of these California refineries, optimized to produce CA’s boutique blend, NV and AZ would be the small-batch outliers. Their isolated blend within the fourth-largest economy, combined with the longer transportation routes, should make their blends more expensive.

But wait, there is more. Las Vegas and Phoenix require yet another blend than other counties in NV, AZ, and CA. But instead of creating yet another specialized and more expensive small-batch blend for NV, AZ, LV, or Phoenix, CA refineries are basically just shipping CA’s boutique blend to those cities as well. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to reflect in their prices too much. That alone would tell us that California’s “Boutique Blend” isn’t so special and not too expensive to create.

But wait, there is still more. Whenever CA is in trouble with getting enough gasoline from its refineries, it just imports it from South Korea, the UK, and others. That would tell us that the art of refining isn’t such an art at all, and can be fairly easily done in other refiners. Or in other words, we are not that special!

Alright, so if the economy of scale isn’t supporting the first two myths, how about the yearly Gas Tax Hikes here in CA? Surely they must be at fault then. This myth is even bigger than the other two.

Critical Thinking:

“In fiscal year 2013, the last year in which data is available, gas taxes and motor vehicle license fees paid for 41.4 percent of state and local road spending. That percentage is falling over time as state gas rates do not keep up with inflation.” [Tax Foundation]

According to the Tax Foundation and national and international research, we know that the gas tax has never paid for all of California’s car-centric infrastructure. The gas tax started some 30-40 years too late and was always too small. Primarily since the federal gas excise tax hasn’t been raised for over 30 years. States and federal jurisdictions always made sure to subsidize it through general funds and financed it through costly bonds and national debt.

This myth also goes hand in hand with two other myths. In those, it says people using public transit, bicycles, or EVs aren’t paying the gas tax and therefore also not paying their fair share. These two deserve some longer posts, so we keep those for later. But essentially no one has been paying their fair share.

“Gasoline Taxes and User Fees Pay for Only Half of State & Local Road Spending” [Tax Foundation, 2014]

But because of the EV myth, California politicians now want to switch away from taxing gasoline at the pump. They want everybody to pay Road Charges per mile instead. They created a pilot program to study and test a California Road Charge. The road charge for driving one mile in California would be between 2 and 4 cents per mile.

A lot of different stakeholders are watching this study. Industry lobbyists, AAA, consumer watchdogs, environmentalists, politicians, unions, etc. Now, the critical question here is, with all these stakeholders representing various sides, would they have chosen a number much different from the current gas tax? Would the number be smaller to attract more volunteers? Would it be higher to sneak in a tax increase?

During any study, you don’t want to change too many variables at once. Most likely, Caltrans would choose 2-4 cents, because that would reflect the cost of the gas tax. Any change to the current price could/would influence the outcome of the pilot study.

So far, we haven’t even looked at the numbers just yet. But critical thinking already tells us that something about these stories seems off.

AAA currently has the national average cost per mile at around $0.76. Here in the Bay Area, that is typically closer to $1.50-$2. The $0.03 per mile gas tax and environmental fees seem rather small and insignificant. Especially since that is the money that supposedly builds and maintains our infrastructure. And we only have to look at the current status of bridges and the amount of potholes to understand that 3 cents haven’t been enough for a long time.

The fact that Las Vegas and Phoenix are using the same blend of gasoline produced in the Bay Area and still don’t share our prices does not explain the price difference between our cities and states.

Neither story nor narrative explains the price differences of $1-2 per gallon. Next time around, we will be looking at more numbers.

REDWOOD CITY, CA — For those tired of ordering the same thing every time they go out to eat, try out some local restaurants in downtown Redwood City that boast a rotating selection of seasonal choices.

From seafood special and Italian classics to Latin fusion and more, downtown Redwood City can offer a little something for everyone looking to expand their culinary palate.

Here is a selection of restaurants provided by the Redwood City Improvement Association:

Mazra | This family owned and operated Mediterranean restaurant serves up bites from Amman, Jordan. Choose from one of Mazra’s signature plates, wraps and family packs or try a little bit of everything with the Falafel Mezza Sampler next.

Ocean Oyster Bar & Grill | Recently opened in downtown, Ocean Oyster Bar & Grill serves up international cuisine but specializes in fresh made-to-order seafood. With a high focus on quality, they offer food and cocktail options in an elegant setting.

Limón | The Castillo brothers opened Limón to bring the Peruvian flavors they grew up with to Redwood City. Locals can come together to share small plates and they have a menu with fresh Peruvian flavors.

Angelicas | Blending California and Latin cuisine, Angelicas delivers a dining experience full of flavor. Every dish is crafted to celebrate both cultures. Choose to eat inside with their inviting aesthetics or outside in their outdoor garden.

LV Mar | LV Mar provides neighborhood tapas that were Michelin recommended three years in a row. Stop by for small bites, brunch and dinner.

REDWOOD CITY, CA — A large-scale exhibition examining the evolving American Dream through symbols of Americana and both blue- and white-collar labor, shaped by the artist’s upbringing in the Midwest, went on display Saturday in Redwood City.

The latest art installation at the Art Kiosk located at 2208 Broadway St. in Redwood City is “Coming Home” by Bay Area artist Ryan Carrington.

It will be on display from July 19 through Sept. 7. An artist reception will take place at 4 p.m. on Sept. 6.

The Redwood City Improvement Association, in collaboration with Fung Collaboratives, has brought “Coming Home.” The installation features textile-based work that examines the conceptual weight of familiar materials, such as pre-worn garments, iconic gingham patterns and objects tied to barbecue culture.

Carrington created American flags sewn from uniforms of workers across class lines. These flags aim to act as a bridge between communities and sparking reflection on labor, class, identity and shared values, according to Carrington. The artist invites viewers to reconsider everyday symbols, from pies to plumbing parts, as channels for empathy and a deeper understanding of American history.

Carrington is a teaching professor at Santa Clara University and his upbringing in a blue-collar family in the Midwest brings personal and regional significance to the work. His installations, showcased nationwide, frequently demonstrated his appreciation for labor, craftsmanship and the impact of material storytelling.

The Art Kiosk in Redwood City presents site-specific works by Bay Area and international artists. Conceived and curated by Lance M. Fung, with project management by Fung Collaboratives, the initiative has been sponsored by the Redwood City Improvement Association since 2019.