Castro Valley Home Lit Up By 20K Lights Synchronized To Music

CASTRO VALLEY, CA — When Bob Frey was growing up on Trenton Drive in Castro Valley, his best friend Fred Lack loved Christmas lights. Together, they tried to convince every home on the block to put up Christmas lights around the holidays.

Many years later, Fred has passed away, and Frey, a Castro Valley real etate broker, has honored his friend’s memory by turning his old friend’s house – where he now lives – into such an extravaganza of lights and sounds that almost all their neighbors have followed suit.

“We did it in his memory,” Frey told Patch of his winter wonderland. “This is his house, and this is something that he loved.”

What began as a few strings of lights back in winter 2016 has evolved into a mini-holiday village: 2,200 multicolored lights adorn their home and nearby multiple trees, twinkling to the tunes of different holiday-rock-n’-roll mashups.

From 5:30 to 10 p.m. each night until Jan. 5, visitors are welcome to pull up near 17923 Trenton Drive, tune the dial to FM 93.9, and prepare to have the house and its surrounding dance and sparkle to everything from a modified “Bohemian Rhapsody” (“I see a little silhouetto of a sheep, shepherds watch, shepherds watch!”) to a mashup of Journey and Metallica called “Don’t Stop the Santaman.”

A giant inflatable snowman sits atop Frey’s father’s 1937 Plymouth pickup truck, which he still drives around town. And just for good measure, a custom red mailbox to Santa sits on the property, in case anyone has any further suggestions for how to create holiday magic.

If letters contain a return address, Santa will reply, Frey promised. Frey also said that Santa will also check his mailbox for canned food donations to bring to a nearby food bank.

Frey now estimates that over 3,000 people come to witness his elaborate creation each year. His wife, Malia, told Patch that a friend said they drove two hours for the spectacle.

A spectacle worth a 2-hour drive takes several months of preparation, and about $7000. 800 lights are on each tree contains a red, green, and blue LED lights, and any of them can be lit at any time. Frey uses a software program to animate different “sequences,” or series of commands for various colors, set to different licensed music files. Frey wrote one of the sequences himself, and said that it took him around 60 hours. He also spends time mixing and matching music with sequences.

And once it’s all done, Frey says he goes out many nights to watch each show and see what can be improved.

“It’s always evolving,” he said, noting that even in a few weeks he’s learned how to produce more sophisticated light shows for each song. But Frey feels like the effort to bring joy to the world has been worth it.

“We started doing this in the spirit of what my best friend wanted when we were kids, and the neighbors kind of got the hint and I think it encouraged them to also decorate, so we’ve seen a large increase in the amount of decorations people put out in the past few years,” he said. “When I see people enjoying themselves, it encourages me to keep doing it and improve it.”