Photograph by Leigh Ann Maze
Smallville, USA: Rick Derrington and Laura Filice mapped the 'villages' that remain in the high-tech Silicon Valley.
Local businessman maps Silicon Valley's 'Villages'
Maps are free to the public in participating Willow Glen stores
By Leigh Ann Maze
Although the Silicon Valley is known globally for its rapidly growing high-tech industry, it has managed to retain a few villages that have an intimate, community-oriented atmosphere.
Rick Derrington and Laura Filice of Willow Glen recently produced a map called "Villages of Silicon Valley," which features a bird's-eye view of the downtown areas of Willow Glen, Los Gatos and Saratoga.
The map, which is free to the public, was distributed to participating merchants at the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Businesses, streets, houses, trees and landmarks of the downtown areas are accurately depicted in a colored pen-and-ink illustration by Los Gatos artist Rick Williams.
"I think I captured the spirit of the towns, which was my intent," Williams says.
The detailed illustration took Williams about three months to complete. He first spent about two weeks taking photos of the more than 100 buildings that had to be drawn. From the photos and input from the map producers, he created the cartoon-like pen-and-ink design, which was then digitized and colored on a computer.
Derrington, an accounting consultant in Willow Glen, was inspired by a similar map he picked up in 1994 while traveling in Sandpoint, Idaho. "I thought it would be fun to do one in our area," Derrington says. "To capture the mystique of the Silicon Valley and marry that with the concept of villages."
Derrington called the Sandpoint map publisher, Discovery Maps in Washington state, with his idea. Last January, he became the first person to purchase a franchise of the company, Map Scenes of California. Since then, several others across the country have purchased franchises from the company, mostly in resort destinations. "Villages of Silicon Valley" is Derrington's first project, produced along with his business partner and fiancée Laura Filice.
Derrington and Filice began pounding the pavement in March, pitching their idea to more than 400 businesses in Willow Glen, Saratoga and Los Gatos. The 115 business that participated, from antique shops and espresso bars to horse stables and vineyards, are illustrated and labeled on the map and are described in the alphabetical and categorical listings on the back of the map.
"The businesses that chose to participate were a little more adventurous than those that chose to wait and see how successful the map would be," Filice says.
Filice and Derrington routinely visit the participating merchants to supply them with new maps. So far, 12,000 of the 50,000 maps printed have been distributed in the communities. Derrington and Filice are working on an updated version, which will be published next Thanksgiving, and they hope to reprint the map every year. Their next project will be a map of the Santa Cruz and Capitola villages.
"This is only the beginning," Filice says of the Villages map. "But I think this is something that's going to be a permanent fixture around here and develop further as time goes on."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
