Style over substance WEEKEND | 19
JUNE 2, 2017 VOLUME 25, NO. 19
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MOVIES | 22
City tries to unravel tangle of demands on transit hub TRAINS, CARS, BIKES AND EMERGING TECH CROWD FUTURE PLANS FOR DOWNTOWN MOUNTAIN VIEW By Mark Noack
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COURTESY OF SAN FRANCISCO GIANT SEA BASS
The San Francisco Giant Sea Bass hold underwater rugby practices sessions in Mountain View.
Rugby H2O UNUSUAL UNDERWATER CONTACT SPORT FINDS A HOME IN MOUNTAIN VIEW’S CITY POOLS By Mark Noack
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re you a skilled swimmer? Do you own flippers and a snorkel? Do you mind competing in a swimsuit with a sea bass plastered on your backside? If you answered yes, then the Bay Area’s premier underwater rugby club wants you! If not, consider joining anyway. Mountain View’s Eagle Park Pool has been the training site for the lone underwater rugby team on the West Coast, the San Francisco Giant Sea Bass. And this co-ed group is looking to grow its ranks by recruiting and training new members interested in getting their feet wet. At this point in any conversation, team president Cy Katrak is ready for the typical response: “What the heck is underwater rugby?”
INSIDE
To hear its fans describe it, it’s a sport like none other. Two teams of six swimmers strap on fins and dive in the deep end of the pool to play a game that blends soccer, basketball and traditional rugby. The catch is it’s played entirely submerged — save for the vital moments when a team member needs to surface for air. It’s a full contact sport that allows grabs, pulls and the occasional underwater dogpile. “It’s more fun than any other sport I’ve ever played,” Katrak said. “The amount of spacial awareness and the number of tactics this game opens up makes it more interesting than your typical land sport.” After going through that brief explainer, Katrak says he is usually met with wide eyes and a glassy stare. But about one in 20 people who hear about the game clearly want to give it a
oving from point A to point B is a simple proposition — but designing a good system to do so can seem downright impossible. This is the conundrum Mountain View faces as it tries to update its downtown transit center. On one hand, the city must accommodate a web of established transportation modes: automobiles, bicycles, trains, shuttles and light rail. On top of that, project planners also must anticipate a suite of emerging technologies forecast to make a big splash in coming years — high-speed rail, autonomous vehicles and perhaps a new podcar line.
All those people-movers must somehow accommodated in the city’s downtown transit center, with enough space left over for a weekend farmer’s market. After a roughly three-year effort, Mountain View’s City Council last week approved a master plan that tries to satisfy everyone by bringing more parking, bike lanes and amenities for mass transit together in the same package. The transit center master plan was approved in a 6-1 vote, with Margaret Abe-Koga opposed. City officials now intend to pursue this local version of Grand Central Station over the next five years — if they can raise the $182 million needed to do it. See TRANSIT HUB, page 8
A banner year for El Camino Hospital INCOME WELL ABOVE EXPECTATIONS, DESPITE CONCERNS OVER SHAKY HEALTH CARE MARKET By Kevin Forestieri
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Linc Jepson gets ready for underwater rugby practice at Rengstorff Pool on May 30.
try, he said. For some, it soon becomes an obsession. Katrak, a 30-year-old software engineer, first learned about the sport in 2014, when he struck up a conversation with a player while doing laps See RUGBY H2O, page 12
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lthough the rhetoric among El Camino Hospital’s top officials has been one of gloomy economic uncertainty and an adapt-ordie mentality, the 2016-17 fiscal year is looking to be one of the hospital’s most prosperous years yet. Budget reports released last week show that El Camino spent less and brought in more money than anticipated, and is expected to stow away just over $155 million in profit. The hospital’s annualized 2016-17 budget, which the hospital’s board of directors
VIEWPOINT 14 | ARTS & EVENTS 15 | GOINGS ON 23 | MARKETPLACE 24 | REAL ESTATE 25
reviewed Tuesday night, May 30, shows that El Camino Hospital and its affiliates made $93 million in operating income — over 75 percent more than what was budgeted for last year — through a combination of higher revenue from patient services and lower labor costs. Along with a $59 million windfall in investment earnings this year, El Camino will be ending the fiscal year with its highest annual earnings going back to at least 2012. Barring any major changes through the end of June, See HOSPITAL, page 9