As the saying goes, “All of the best things in life are free.”  Next week, San Jose merchants will have a new opportunity to promote their businesses and attract new customers.  And…it’s free.

I support an ordinance in San Jose that allows for the cultivation and sale of medical marijuana dispensaries/collectives.

Proposition 215, which was passed with voter approval in 1996,  called for the legalization of Medicinal Marijuana with 56 percent of the voters in favor. Santa Clara County supported this proposition by 64 percent. Since then, the legislature has passed SB420 which dealt with the actual implementation of Medical Marijuana.

UPDATED: City Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio released a memo Tuesday proposing that San Jose adopt an ordinance to regulate and tax the cultivation and sale of medical marijuana at dispenseries in San Jose.

The memo, which the District 6 councilmember will speak about at next Wednesday’s Rules Committee meeting, asks the council to discuss allowing medical cannabis establishments in specifically zoned locations within the city. It also outlines his proposal for the taxation of doctor-prescribed uses of pot, most notably that all tax revenue generated would be earmarked for the police department and street maintenance.

Didn’t know Mission Ale House was closing this week? Hey, don’t worry, neither did the people who work there. “I was out of town spreading my father’s ashes, and came home to no job,” says Johnny Van Wyk, who this year closed his club Johnny V’s and moved his live-music bookings to Mission, where he was general manager.

San Jose’s Green Vision program may have hit a snag. Bob Garzee, one of the key players in the city’s push to create a network of public-private partnerships, has been sued by Union Bank of San Francisco. Garzee, the CEO of Synegry EV, Inc., had been planning to create a technology incubator in the city with which his company could develop electric vehicles. But when his line of credit came up for review late this June, it was denied

Does Apple really understand climate change? Not according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This week, Apple became the latest in a series of major corporations to quit the Chamber, citing differences over attitudes toward climate change. Catherine Novelli, Apple’s Vice President for Worldwide Government Affairs, said that the company “would prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue.” On Wednesday, the Chamber fired back.

WET may have had its entertainment permit pulled, but the club will open for some October events and is still making news. The owners of the nightclub have sued the City of San Jose, claiming that the SJPD’s decision to pull the plug and revoke its license violates its constitutional rights. Police claim that the club was a public nuisance: over the course of five months, SJPD reports, its owners were given 49 chances to rectify problems ranging from serving alcohol to minors to a stabbing on the dance floor.

When the recession ends (if it’s not over already) throngs of Generation Y-ers can be expected to flock to San Jose as one of the hippest places in the country. A team of experts from the Wall Street Journal used a variety of parameters to decide which cities will be the up-and-coming “youth magnets” over the next few years. All the biggies made the list, with Seattle and Washington DC tied for the top spot just ahead of San Jose, and so did some of the nation’s smaller cities, such as Portland and Raleigh.

San Jose Earthquakes owner Lew Wolff was the keynote speaker at the Soccer Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SSVCF) annual dinner at the Fairmont Hotel Saturday night. At a highly anticipated event, Wolff showed a 10-minute video presentation that included architectural designs of what the proposed soccer stadium across Coleman Avenue from the Mineta San Jose International Airport will look like, once corporate sponsorships are finally secured. SSVCF is a not a booster club—they are not technically affiliated with the Earthquakes.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the greenest of them all? San Francisco claims it is, but so do Seattle, Portland, and even Detroit, home of the Big Three automakers. Since he came into office, Mayor Chuck Reed has been pitching San Jose is as the nation’s green capital, and he will prove it to anyone who doubts him.

The Toyota Corporation recently announced that the NUMMI Plant in Fremont will be closed next March.  Last week, a number of NUMMI workers and a handful of politicians held a rally outside of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco office to protest the decision to close down the plan

The Caravan Lounge has poured strong drinks on South Almaden Avenue in downtown San Jose for at least 45 years, but ever since current property owners Jan Chargin and Lynn M. Bohnen asked the Redevelopment Agency in 2007 to buy the building, rumors have run rampant about what would finally happen to the classic dive bar. The San Jose City Council was scheduled to vote today on whether the RDA should fork over $1,120,000 for the property, plus an extra $187,000 in “relocation” costs to current Caravan operator, George Rich.

However, the meeting adjourned 15 minutes ago with no mention of the Caravan.

“We are sorry to say the city is forcing us to move. For now we will be open by appointment only.” So reads a small sign taped to the locked front door of Moto Amore in downtown San Jose. The small scooter sales and service shop, located in the old Tenth Street Pharmacy building, officially started its move to Santa Clara last Monday, following months of what owner John Bettencourt says has been an uphill struggle dealing with San Jose’s code enforcement bureaucracy.

“Have you ever heard that the city is not friendly to downtown small business? Well, every word of it is true,” says Bettencourt, 39. “It’s one thing to say you need a permit, but it’s another thing to make it impossible to get one.”

Traffic may be down considerably at Mineta San Jose International Airport, but that hasn’t affected its quality of service. The $1.3 billion renovation and modernization project has earned Mineta the title of Airport of the Year for 2008.

Just over a month ago, San Jose-based Cisco Systems replaced GM on the Dow Jones list of the nation’s biggest companies. Now the networking and communications giant announced that it will be laying off some 700 people at its corporate headquarters in San Jose. The move is part of a larger strategy, announced in November, to reduce spending by $1 billion in fiscal 2009. At the time, the company announced that it “will be targeting reductions in travel and discretionary-related expenses, including offsites, outside services ... and other activities.” The company is now saying that “this limited restructuring is part of our ongoing, targeted realignment of resources.”

Critics are noting that Cisco’s second corporate headquarters in Bangalore, India, is soon to be expanded to 3,000 workers.

Another downtown club went dark last week as SJPD Chief Rob Davis used the city’s urgency ordinance for the first time, suspending the entertainment permit of the SoFA district’s Club Wet for one month. Recent club closures unrelated to the urgency ordinance include Taste, The Vault Ultralounge and Johnny V’s.  The urgency measure gives the chief broad discretion to close businesses viewed as imminent threats to public safety. The ordinance was passed by the city council two years ago following a shooting incident in the parking lot outside Club Ambassador.