Downtown San Mateo This Summer: A New Brunch Row on B Street, Thursdays at Central Park, and the Block That's About to Disappear

If you have lived in downtown San Mateo for even three years, the mental map you use to plan a Saturday has quietly gone out of date. The anchors you used to orient by, Draeger's on Fourth, Wursthall on Baldwin, B Street Books on the south end, are gone. What replaced them is not the same kind of downtown at a different address. It is a different kind of downtown.

The short version of the thesis: downtown has flipped from a dinner-and-department-store district into a brunch-and-Thursday-nights district, and the construction fence that is about to go up at 222 E. Fourth is the most visible sign that the shift is now permanent.

The block that is about to disappear

The Draeger's site has housed a full-service grocery on Fourth Avenue since 1997. That era ends this summer.