Among the elite class of Bay Area holiday lights enthusiasts, Joseph Leake goes the extra mile – literally – to transform his family’s property into a bright and brilliant spectacle every winter season.
Leake lives in San Francisco, where he often works long weeks and double shifts in the Sheriff’s Department’s DNA and forensics unit. But somehow, he will find time to commute to his 93-year-old father’s home in Redding, more than 200 miles north, to set up an elaborate, nature-themed Christmas display that includes a blue-lighted river coursing through the front yard, berry-filled trees, otters mining gold, hot air balloons and a gnome community center.
This year, Leake’s portfolio as a holiday lights enthusiast is growing as he takes over running the famous California Christmas Lights website. The site has become the go-to place for Bay Area people who want to enjoy a festive winter night outing by exploring extraordinary holiday lights displays in their neighborhoods or nearby communities.
The nature-themed holiday lights display at the Redding home of John Leake, whose son, Joseph Leake, curates the famed California Christmas Lights website. (Photo/Joseph Leaked)
Leake is taking over the volunteer job of curating California Christmas Lights from Alex Dourov, another famed enthusiast from Livermore, who created the first iteration of the site in 1999. Leake and Dourov knew each other from the California Christmas Lights Facebook page. Dourov reached out to Leake with his plans to retire, in part because he and his wife like to spend time babysitting their young grandchildren.
Leake said Dourov told him, “If you don’t want to do it, then it’s closing down, and I went, ‘Oh my God,’ you can’t let California Christmas Lights close down. That’s just wrong.”
LIVERMORE, CA – NOVEMBER 30: Alexander Hourel Flores, 6, of Hayward, interacts with a snow machine as part of the Christmas display at Alex Dourov’s Knottingham Circle extravaganza in Livermore, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Dourov may have passed the California Christmas Lights torch, but he will still decorate his family’s home in his usual over-the-top fashion, as he’s been doing since the early 1990s.
Like Leake and other great home illuminators, Dourov started decorating his property with a few modest strands of lights. But his decorating ambitions grew ever more expansive and detailed each year, soon incorporating a light show accompanied by music.
The site grew out of his desire to help people who love holiday lights find his home and others in the Tri-Valley area. Early on, Dourov’s site, of course, included a page for “Deacon” Dave Rezendes’ world-famous display at his Livermore home, Casa del Pomba.
Very quickly, the website expanded to include homes in other East Bay towns and over the Altamont Pass in San Joaquin County. Pretty soon, holiday decorators in the South and North bays and on the Peninsula signed on, too, and the website eventually grew to include more than 300 homes in some 130 towns throughout Northern California.
Now Leake is running the site, with the help …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
