In the midst of the city’s worst budget crisis and a worldwide recession, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed headed a panel yesterday that focused solely on the city’s upside, and new efforts to stimulate local business. “This is a no-bad-news zone,” Reed announced to a crowd of business leaders, investors, building owners and realtors gathered in the San Jose City Hall Rotunda for lunch.

It’s official. San Jose’s Tied House Cafe and Brewery is gone. But fear not, local beer fans. A new brewery may be taking its place down the street.

Is the Tied House Brewing Co. downtown San Jose"s latest restaurant casualty?

The doors are locked and all the brewing equipment is gone. While the brewery’s web site (tiedhouse.com) says they are closed temporarily for remodeling, Rosemary Colon, assistant manager at the still-open Mt. View location, says the brewpub may not reopen at all.

Fisker Automotive, designer and builder of boutique hybrid and electric vehicles, came to enemy territory yesterday to debut its Fisker Karma at Santana Row, and to announce the opening of a Silicon Valley retail outlet. But the news was eclipsed by the announcement today that Fisker’s rival, the Silicon Valley-based Tesla Automotive, inked a big-money deal with Daimler Motors.

What do Inlaid Thermoplastic Asphalt Pavement Marking Systems have in common with bollard sleeves and Wilshire round planters? Easy. They’re all part of the SoFA District Year One Development Plan—a cosmetic redesign of South First Street between San Carlos and Reed Street.

Last Tuesday I had the same exact meal as two million people—two eggs, two strips of bacon, two pancakes, and two pieces of sausage. I feel like a jerk saying this, but I have never felt more connected to my fellow Americans, or our collective condition.

The annual TED conference is often the most interesting of the big national nerdfests, thanks to its bridging of the worlds of high-tech and the arts (the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design). Generally, the confab’s biggest buzz comes from some new wonder-device (Jeff Han’s touch-screen demonstration from TED 2006 is still a big hit on YouTube). This year, the Big Story is not one gizmo, but two ideas.

In an Aug. 13, 2008, cover story, I channeled the Urban Blight Exploration Junkie and raved over the Pink Elephant Center, that landmark rundown strip mall at the corner of King Road and Virginia in San Jose City Council District 5. I had quacked about the place once before in a previous column, but for that travel feature, titled “Postcards from the Edge of San Jose,” in which I mapped out ignored masterpieces in each district, striking visuals were necessary to properly document the shabby outré ugliness of that East Side monument.

Watch Dog Silicon Valley reported yesterday that Tesla Motors faces new competition in the world of cool electric roadsters, and speculates that the company is unlikely to come to turn San Jose into the green Detroit that some have imagined.

News that Saratoga developer Ante Bilic is moving forward with plans to convert a Gilroy restaurant into a topless bar has set South County tongues wagging. Some locals are worrying aloud that the proposed Showgirls nightclub would be a crime magnet. Others seem to find some humor in the situation.

Last month, for the seventh year in a row, the folks at NVIDIA—the Santa Clara–based visual computing giant—decided to do forego their annual company holiday party and commit themselves to a knock-down, drag-out community service effort called Project Inspire. One thousand employees, along with students, friends and family, volunteered and made their way out to Overfelt High School in East San Jose for the shindig last month.

This past week, the San Jose City Council gave its preliminary approval for a $300 million expansion of the San Jose Convention Center. The cost-benefit analysis upon which the council leaned to make its decision raises more questions than answers about the utility of the project. Is the convention center expansion designed to meet the needs of the people of San Jose, or the needs of the San Jose Redevelopment Agency?

Steve Jobs announced this afternoon that he will be taking a medical leave, due to a mysterious ailment that has left him rail-thin and frail. And so It turns out that Gizmodo was right after all. Or at least partly right.

Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s brand-new CEO, is promising to bring some passion to the job. On a conference call with analysts and reporters this morning, Bartz said she planned to help Yahoo get “some friggin’ breathing room” so the company can “kick some butt.”

Sometimes, even bleak economic times like this, the Grinch doesn’t have a chance. Just ask Leannette M. Spence, assistant vice president and personal banker at the Bank of America in Cambrian Park. Last week, Spence had a customer who accidentally left her card in the bank’s ATM. When the customer called in to cancel it, she learned that a $200 cash withdrawal had been made at the same ATM immediately after she left, which led to all kinds of anxiety on her part: was there a way to track down who stole it? Could she get the money back in time for Christmas?

Last week, Apple announced that next year’s MacWorld would be its last.  In a related article, the SF Chronicle reported that several other large trade shows have been cancelled, and that the city would take a direct financial hit as a consequence.  The article offered a quote from an industry expert who declared the days of large-scale trade shows to be over.

Meanwhile, San Jose continues to make plans for a $300 million expansion of the convention center.  Rather than spending $300 million on the expansion, why not entice Google to buy the Sobrato Tower (now owned by Oracle) with a $100 million subsidy?  Think about it…a Google move to the downtown would be a huge (and permanent) financial shot in the arm for the hotels, restaurants, and merchants.