25th Avenue

A little history

San Mateo has a downtown, and then it has 25th Avenue, the corridor locals have long called the city's second downtown. The Beresford area around it was annexed in 1929, and in 1937 Axel Johnson of the San Mateo Investment Company laid out the 25th Avenue commercial district to serve the new Beresford Manor homes going up nearby in Tudor, Mediterranean, and bungalow styles. The strip grew up with a vintage, mid-century look, anchored by legacy businesses, most famously the Manor Theatre, which lit up 32 West 25th Avenue from 1941 to 1982, where generations of kids caught summer movies. It is an office building now, but the building still stands. That vintage look is part of why Hollywood came calling: in October 2011, the Gerard Butler surfing movie Chasing Mavericks (then titled Of Men and Mavericks) dressed the strip up as 1980s Santa Cruz, transforming storefronts like Wes Liquors and closing 25th Avenue between El Camino Real and Flores Street for the shoot. It told the true story of young surfer Jay Moriarty and the legendary Mavericks big-wave break.

For decades this two-block stretch between El Camino Real and South Delaware Street was a full neighborhood shopping street. Retail has thinned since, some stores moved on to the malls, but the biggest change came from underneath it: the 25th Avenue Grade Separation Project. Conceived in 1999 and finished in September 2021 at a cost of nearly $206 million, it raised the Caltrain tracks, lowered the road, and rebuilt the nearby station, finally ending the old traffic backups at the crossing.

Today 25th Avenue bridges past and present. Old-school Italian restaurants like Luceti's, on the street since 1984, share the block with vintage record shops, nail studios, barbershops, and newer boutiques. It never lost its neighborhood feel, and it is still where the west side eats, shops, and runs its errands.