Most cities revel in their own pop culture landmarks or specific locales tied to things that celebrities did there. For example, much hoopla survives about the road outside Paso Robles where James Dean crashed and died, the garage that spawned Hewlett-Packard, or that stretch of highway in Malibu where Mel Gibson got his infamous DUI.  San Jose has a few similar sites, for example, the house on Jackson Street where Nirvana stayed in 1990.

I will suggest another local landmark which might possibly achieve similar notoriety: the city utilities box at the corner of Fruitdale and Southwest Expressway, where Shepard Fairey, on Aug. 2, 2000, plastered a promotional poster for his art show at Anno Domini the next night.

ESPN is cool, but San Jose Channel 15 is cooler.

The new apartment I moved into has cable, and I’m a new man. And although I was excited about ESPN (and basically any channel that expands my viewing options beyond Law and Order and CSI reruns) I’ve decided that nothing beats Channel 15—our local community access television. Peep the line-up: In the few hours I had it on while moving furniture, I watched sermons on three different religions in three different languages, two shows on paranormal activity, a kids mariachi group dance in the back of a parking lot, and one dude yell at his camera crew for a half hour straight. It was the best. The Civic Center channel is cool, and lets you get a glimpse into the political machinery at City Hall, but if you want a ground up view of San Jose, its diverse interests, beliefs, and unadulterated directions, Channel 15 is your looking glass.

Apparently the New England Patriots worked up an appetite Sunday while demolishing the Raiders 49-26, so the following day, they drove down to San Jose to pay a visit to Morton’s Steakhouse. Lucky for the old guys on the team, it was “rookie night,” which means the newbies had to pick up the tab. And what a tab. A tipster informs Fly that the bill came to $30,000.

Since there just aren’t enough documentaries about 19th-century Mexican banditos who were hung in San Jose, resident author and publisher Charlie Trujillo decided to begin making one. The scalawag under discussion is every local historian’s favorite forgotten troublemaker, Tiburcio Vasquez, who rampaged across California during the post–Gold Rush era.

New History San Jose Exhibit Portrays Santa Clara County’s World War II

Those of us younger than 60 usually think of World War II in terms of our fathers or grandfathers battling enemies in far-off Pacific island jungles and snow-covered European fields, or through iconic images of Iwo Jima, D-Day and the atomic bomb. We often forget that the last formally declared U.S. war also absorbed the entire population of our country in a massive coordinated effort to defeat ideologically driven enemies that really did threaten our very existence as a nation. A fascinating new History San Jose (HSJ) exhibition in the Pacific Hotel Gallery at History Park in Kelley Park shows how Santa Clara County, on the western domestic front of the war, played a significant part in that effort and how the war affected the everyday lives of people in the valley.

AMT suddenly shuttered following cancellation of Tarzan.

In September, American Musical Theatre of San Jose threw a big, raunchy party for the ladies—a tuneful strip show known as The Full Monty. The audience, reported Metro’s critic, was full of white-haired ladies “snorting, choking [with] tear-inducing laughter.” There were tears but no laughter this Monday as AMT suddenly announced that it was going out of business. The company, which began life in 1935 (during another economic meltdown) as the San Jose Civic Light Opera, was no more.

Rumors have swirled that San Jose Magazine was about to bite the dust, and confirmation came this evening with an item by the Mercury News’ Sal Pizarro. The columnist reports that the December issue will be San Jose Magazine’s last. Instead of plugging plastic surgeons and lawyers on glossy pages, the company will reinvent itself as a video production company, according to Publisher Gilbert Sangari.

Ruminations on the Enigma Variations

I’m still a bit wound up from the election, Luis Valdez’s magnificent performance at the Mexican Heritage Plaza recently, and the afterglow of our wonderful mariachi festival. The election has definitely captured a mood of optimism and the determination to keep our hand on the plow and fix the mess we’re in.

Lately, I’ve been in a writing mood, which only became more insistent after I turned on the car radio the other night and found myself listening to English composer Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. On the long drives home from San Jose, especially after evening gigs where I have to be the host and “on” for the evening, I always turn on the radio for the drive back and listen either to the classical station or show tunes or Sinatra.  If I’m lucky, I get to hear something new that catches my imagination, which helps me to stay alert.

Silicon Alleys

When it comes to contemporary American classical music composers, John Adams is probably the most widely performed while at the same time the most provocative and criticized. To this day, his 1990 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, about the Achille Lauro hijacking in the Middle East, causes political and emotional trauma whenever it’s produced. Other stage works like Nixon in China and A Flowering Tree have sent critics and purists into uncomfortable tizzies worldwide.