palo alto

Small suburban town in the Bay Area, about an hour's drive south of San Francisco. Home to Steve Young, the Hewlett Packard garage, Steve Jobs and Robert Wozniak (founders of Apple), Stanford University, and the Grateful Dead. LIKE ANY TOWN, it has rich, middle-class, lower-middle-class, and even a few homeless people. But mostly rich people, because the minumum house price is around $750K. Ironically, the people who call it "Shallow Alto" are the shallowest ones around. Palo Alto has a liberal atmosphere and Republicans are pretty much persecuted, but the town members tend to vote conservatively because when it comes down to it, they want to keep their money. Palo Alto is home to two high schools: Palo Alto High School (north side, informally known as Paly) and Henry M. Gunn High School (south side, informally known as Gunn). Paly is located close to Stanford (across El Camino Real) and is ranked 199th on the Newsweek list of best public high schools. Gunn is ranked 50th.