I have a friend in town this week visiting from Ireland. It’s always interesting to see our town from an outsider’s perspective. He is well traveled, has lived in various American cities before, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco, and so he is aware that there is life outside his little green island. But when we were talking about what he wanted to do when he was here, I thought I had better take him to San Francisco or else he’ll be bored; it won’t be chic enough in the South Bay and there won’t be enough to do. 

I thought that arenas and baseball stadiums brought out the most dramatic, intense, and even incendiary discussions, but I stand corrected—for now. It seems that currently in our valley, the mention of BART is enough to send many normally sane blokes to the ramparts, girded for battle.

City Hall Diary

…well, actually, I toured District 2 with Councilmember Forrest Williams. However, sometimes people mistakenly call him by the actor’s name instead. Who could blame them? Councilmember Williams has star power; especially driving his Batmobile Mercedes. Councilmember Williams is very energetic and shared many stories about District 2 with me. He does his morning jog up the local hill and eats oatmeal every morning. I hope to have his energy as my hair grays.

The weekly open forum for saying what you think about anything and everything.

SanJoseInside.com Among Those Blocked By Chinese Gov’t

Angered over the Chinese Government’s decision to limit access to the internet, Metro Newspapers and its affiliates Metroactive, Metro Silicon Valley, SV411, SanJose.com and SanJoseInside.com have decided to vehemently protest the affront to free speech by staging what they are calling “venue-hugging” at certain sites used for Olympic events in and around Beijing.

San Jose Police have confirmed that Eric Hernandez, the former Cindy Chavez intern convicted in March of hacking city government emails, was arrested Tuesday for assault and battery. According to police spokesman Sgt. Mike Sullivan, Hernandez allegedly attacked and beat a man at the Alma Community Center.

Coinciding with the 2008 presidential election, Dr. Seuss has posthumously thrown his hat into the ring with a new art show, “Dr. Seuss for President,” at the Peabody Gallery in Los Gatos, featuring never-before-released politically charged prints of Seuss’ work.

Unbeknownst to some, several of Dr. Seuss’ books contain deftly veiled sociopolitical commentary in-between the lines. The Lorax, for example, was a seminal piece of modern-day environmentalist literature, written in 1971 an as argument for corporate responsibility and resource conservation. Years earlier, 1958’s Yertle the Turtle was an argument against fascism—Seuss even once admitted he modeled the Yertle character after Hitler himself.

Abetted by the Adobe Systems-funded group 1stACT Silicon Valley, San Jose’s Office of Economic Development and Redevelopment attempted last month to introduce an ordinance to regulate newsracks in the downtown area—without talking to a number of local newspaper publishers. Although the advocates of uniform news boxes spent time with the publishers of daily papers, they failed to contact free newspaper publishers.

This past Friday night, and again on Saturday, searchlights announced the reopening of the Cuccini nightclub under its new name, Sabor, thanks to a stay of execution issued by Judge James Emerson on July 18. The Superior Court judge issued a Temporary Restraining Order that prevents the City of San Jose from pulling the club’s entertainment permit.

Well, we are on the cusp of another big decision about the future of our valley and our region. Are we going to commit to the biggest transportation project in our history and vote to approve a one-eighth-cent sales tax to raise billions of dollars in a push for rail transit?

I didn’t know if it could happen, but it turns out it is possible to get people to voluntarily sit through a panel of speakers from the Bureau of Automotive Repair. All you’ve got to do is couch it in a car show featuring some of the cleanest low riders, bombs, hot rods, imports and Harleys in the South Bay. Then surround that with the one place that you know is poppin’ on a Saturday afternoon—the Berryessa Flea Market.

I wanted to keep the discussion going on education—tagging on to last week’s topic—since we all have such differing opinions on what we need to do in this area.  I happened to watch the CNN special Black in America last week, and it had a fascinating piece on an unusual plan to improve student achievement in New York City’s education system.

Some Bay Area school districts are making a stronger effort to identify and remove students who are not eligible to enroll in a particular school.  It seems that a number of parents are trying to enroll their kids into better performing schools despite the fact that they live outside of the district or the designated school boundaries.

City Hall Diary

Vice Mayor Dave Cortese wins the prize for having the most historical knowledge of his district. I had the opportunity to tour District 8 with the vice mayor and get a better understanding of the land we call Evergreen and its agricultural history.