Ritz Camera & Image

i tried to use a gift certificate here, and found the inventory somewhat liimited. They did not have a lot of the products advertised in their catalogues

Big 5 Sporting Goods

this Big5 store has a lot of inventory on basketball paraphenelia - their shoe supply is also very broad. they are constantly offering sales, so you can usually get stuff at a really good price

Fry's Electronics

this specific Fry's seems to have the best inventory of products - we bought a portable DVD player, and found this store to have the model that we were looking for, even when another Fry;s store said it was't available

Jeffrey's Hamburgers

we take the CalTrain to the San Mateo stop and have burgers, hotdogs and fries here - very kid friendly. However, we once went there with a group of kids (like 7), and they shoved us into the back patio area and made us feel unwelcome. If they are going to be kid friendly, they should act so.

Country Club Cleaner

been going here for years, and they are always reliable. they also gladly take returned hangers and plastic bags for recycling, which is awlays convenient.

The Old Pro

probably the best place for watching multiple sporting events at once. We were here during the NCAA tourney, and it was great to be amongst so many factions representing the teams in the elite 8 - food is very good and atmosphere is very friendly to the sportsfan. It got a bit crowded, but that's probably what you're going there for during something like the NCAA tourney.

Dutch Goose

for sporting events, leaves a lot to be desired if you want to watch the event. We went there for the NCAA finals, and they didn't even bother to fix the broken TV sets, so we had to watch the game on a small 13" screen hangning on the wall. You'd think for that event they would at least have things ready for their customers, but they just hung a "do not touch" sign on the bigger TV, on one of the biggest sporting events each year.

If you want a better ventue to watch sports with friends, the Old Pro blows the Goose away.

Paramount's Great America

we took our 3 1/2 yr old daughter, not know ing how much would be relevant to her interests. There is a very kid friendly section with about 4-5 rides that she really liked (Dora ride, etc). The water park area was also nice (like a giant pool inside an amusement park), and they had convenient changing room areas to get in and out of wet clothes.

Food was marginal there, but adequate for a park like this.

All in all, we had good fun for a good 4-5 hours there before she started to burn out.