Sunnyvale: Iron Man, Vampires and Ham-fisted Ghosts

Now, we all know that Iron Man is the greatest movie ever made. It is a peerless masterpiece of the cinematographic arts. We also know that my considered and unbiased view has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that star stud Robert Downey Junior is the hottest man on the planet and wears skin-tight latex underneath that moulded metal costume.

So, it was with cool, calm collection that I discovered on arriving in Sunnyvale, California, that it is home to ... wait for it ... The Iron Man Museum. I was so cool, in fact, that I nearly fainted. Having grappled for weeks with the preconception that the only interesting thing about Sunnyvale was that it was the setting for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (albeit dubbed Sunnydale to protect the heavily mortgaged residents), this was the best news I’d had since reading that two Iron Man sequels were in the works.

I immediately emailed Le Grand Belge, the sole living witness to my very first Iron Man experience and the fine friend responsible for reviving me thereafter with a large glass of something alcoholic, to inform him that I would likely be taking up residence at Sunnyvale’s shrine to the ultimate superhero, so would not need his spare room for a while. I can’t even imagine his disappointment. I then advised my current hosts, Maximus and The Lovely C, to brace themselves, as I might be gone for some time.

The museum is located at the Northrop Grumman Marine Systems plant on Hendy Avenue between Sunnyvale Avenue and Fair Oaks Avenue. Northrop Grumman makes aerospace thingies, military thingies, defence thingies and other thingies, which kind of tallies with Iron Man’s day job in the movie, so I reckoned the owners thought the plant an appropriate place to pay homage to the metal marvel. So, off I set, Iron Man battery-powered toothbrush in hand.

Utter devastation

Picture my dismay, then, to discover that Sunnyvale’s Iron Man Museum contains not a single hint of the fabulous flying fox, but “materials of historical interest related to Joshua Hendy Iron Works and the Sunnyvale operations of Westinghouse Electric and Northrop Grumman”. Tours are open for Northrop Grumman employees, apparently, from 11:30am to 12:30pm on the second Monday of every month, except December. If you phone up and ask very nicely on a full moon, while facing west and whistling Dixie, they may let mere mortals in for a guided tour.

The Iron Men in question were, seemingly, celebrated employees of the Hendy Ironworks during the World Wars. Gone was my dream of a Robert Downey Junior cuddle-your-heart-out pillow case. As if in cruel compensation, the museum’s website later informed me that for a tax-deductible $10, I could buy Herb Cabral’s To the End of the Rainbow, “the story of the Sunnyvale plant with emphasis on the Westinghouse Electric Corporation years (1947-early 1990s)” or a “handy glove compartment guide to area museums” for $2. I could have an Iron Man Museum Coffee Mug, with no Iron Man on it, for $5.

I was fed up. I sulked. I tried to make anagrams out of my name (A Bare Hot Linchpin, A Harp Bitch Online, Cab Heir On A Plinth and A Printable Inch Ho being my favourites), then pulled myself together and decided to find out what else Sunnyvale had to offer apart from my fabulous friends, who had agreed with only a small amount of bribery and coercion to let me move back in.

Safe as houses

Sunnyvale lies just south of San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley in Santa Clara county, has a population of about 131,000 and, while host to a slew of fictional vampires, is the fifth-safest city in America, according to FBI statistics. I’m thinking this must be true, because I haven’t seen a single blood-sucking member of the undead while out and about, unless you count the guy at the checkout in Safeway, who definitely doesn’t feature among the living. Buffy had it easy.

Sunnyvale is so safe, in fact, that it’s one of the few cities in the US to have integrated emergency services, with personnel trained as police officers, fire fighters and ambulance staff in a bid to fill their time. Indeed, The Sunnyvale Sun reported in its public safety notices recently that law-enforcement officers had to be scrambled after “a victim was pushed by her sister’s ex-boyfriend after showing up uninvited” and, in a separate incident, “an individual punched a client”. It helpfully provided addresses so we discerning tourists could stay well away from these obvious trouble spots.

According to city-data.com, there are slightly more men than women in Sunnyvale, residents earn nearly twice as much as the average Californian and the median age is 34. Happily, Sunnyvale also lives up to its name. It has only snowed twice on record, that I could discover, and the temperature swings between 10 degrees Celsius in winter and 35 degrees Celsius in summer. The website’s 2008 cost-of-living index puts Sunnyvale at 162.9, well above the US average index base of 100, making it a lovely, but very pricey place to sunbathe.

Somewhat strangely, it also tells us that the ratio of residents to registered sex offenders is 1,380 to one, below the state average (thankfully), and you can find the names and addresses of said people online, so you don’t accidentally buy the outrageously expensive house next door. There are apparently two street gangs in Sunnyvale, but the city seems to deal with them pretty effectively by threatening them with crochet classes, ballroom dancing and other after-school activities.

Whose fault is it?

Sunnyvale does, however, sit between the Hayward Fault, 10 miles to the east, and the San Andreas Fault, 7 miles to the west. And there are itty-bitty faults in the foothills of Cupertino, right next door, making earthquake risk not insignificant. This explains, perhaps, why all the famous people from Sunnyvale have left. Desperate Housewife Terri Hatcher was born here, as was Olympic skater Brian Boitano. It doesn’t explain, however, why people pay so much for houses that might fall down.

And if it doesn’t fall down, there’s a good chance the city of Sunnyvale will knock it down for you. It levelled its town centre eons ago and the rebuilding work is ... ahhh ... still ongoing. Sunnyvale’s retail core now comprises about 184 acres of scaffolding and, from what I can gather from an intriguing document on the city’s website, lots of paper relating to lawsuits.

So far, though, they’ve left the main drinking drag, Murphy Avenue, intact. The local founding fathers apparently wanted to call the town Murphy after a founding mother, but weren’t allowed, so they called it Sunnyvale instead. Murphy Avenue, though, lives up to its proud kind-of-Irish heritage. I counted, I think, 7,324 Irish pubs there, as well as a shop that sold inflatable flamingos. And it hosts the Sunnyvale Art and Wine fair in early June (after I leave, of course), as well as a farmers’ market on Saturday mornings.

The best thing by far about the market is the seriously hot guy on the olive stall, who had little trouble selling me a superb tub of muffaletta, or olive tapenade “with a New Orleans twist”, after an offer to let me sample everything on display (and, I was hoping, some that wasn’t). Well, he can give my muffaletta a New Orleans twist any time. I’ll be back to take him up on that generous offer, I can assure you.

Things that go bump ...

Further in its favour, Sunnyvale has a great Borders bookshop, which allows you to buy coffee and read books for free (I’m told this is quite common in the US; you get arrested for opening a magazine in Europe), and a fantastic PF Chang’s Chinese restaurant, where I was forced, very much against my will, to drink excellent New Zealand sauvignon blanc and eat tempura’d green beans with a spicy dip that would make your toes curl in sheer delight. There’s a very relaxing facial spa around the corner, where for $100, you can be made to look about five days younger, and a cute chiropractor, who does wondrous things to your lower back with a vibrating machine. At least, I think it was a machine.

Alternatively, if you want to have your bones rattled, you can take a trip to the Toys ‘R’ Us store, which, apparently, is haunted by the ghost of an unfortunate farm labourer of the late 1800s, whose spirit didn’t quite make it to the Great Beyond when he stupidly fell on his own axe and bled to death. According to snopes.com, the man’s name was Johnson (at least, I assume they’re referring to his name and not his injury) and he has a particular fondness for knocking over merchandise in Aisle 15C and turning on the taps in the ladies’ restroom.

Now, call me cynical, but I think they need to take a closer look at that guy in Safeway.


© Poilin Breathnach 2009