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.

Recently, the Mercury News reported that the San Jose International Airport is looking at major layoffs over the next 18 months.  According to the FAA, San Jose has experienced a 14 percent decline in domestic departures over the past two years.

Violent crime among young people is on the increase, according to a new study by James Fox and Marc Swatt from Northwestern University. Fox and Swatt indicate that the much heralded decline in youth crime in the 1990s has ceased.  According to anecdotal data of my neighbors and friends, we are experiencing a rising tide of youth crime and gang-related violence in the suburbs of San Jose.

Last week, the Council spent two and half hours talking about making changes to a 1997 “competition policy.” At the prior Council meeting we spent two-plus hours talking about the same topic.  That policy is already burdensome and makes it difficult for businesses and/or non-profits to jump through all the hoops to do business with the city. I don’t own a business or manage a non-profit, so don’t ask me, ask the only two businesses that tried to utilize the policy during the past 12 years, but to no avail.

This is San Jose Inside’s open forum—open for discussion of a recent news event, local issue, or any other concern.

Last month saw the passing of John Byrne, lead singer of the ‘60s San Jose garage-rock band Count Five. He penned the immortal fuzzed-out 1966 hit Psychotic Reaction, which peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard charts and was listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Top 500 songs that shaped rock & roll. A whole two years before Dionne Warwick sang that tune we all know and despise, the Count Five staged its famous promo picture, wearing Dracula-style capes in front of the Winchester Mystery House.

Last Monday, eight year old Alex Casillas and his father were hit by a car that ran a red light at Story Road and Adrian Way.  The child is in critical condition at Valley Medical Center.  Tuesday night, KTVU reporter Lloyd LaCuesta did a story on the hit and run incident.  Channel 2’s website provided viewers with the address for a bank account that has been set up to assist the Casillas Family.

Are taskforces where community hopes goes to die?  I am about to find out. On Jan, 15, I went to the first meeting of the drunk-in-public taskforce, a group assembled by the council as their response to a heated public forum back in November.

The challenge of making public education a system whereby all students gain the necessary skills to be successful participants in our 21st Century democracy will be one of the toughest problems for the Obama administration to solve—closing Gitmo will be easier. However, I am very hopeful.

Since 1921, Faber’s Cyclery has occupied a legendary, leaning building at the corner of First Street and Margaret in San Jose. The structure was already steeped in local lore when Alex LaRiviere took over Faber’s in 1978. Built in 1884, the place began life as a saloon called Benjamin’s Corner. A well-preserved old blacksmith shop still sits out back, right next to a heritage pepper tree eight feet in diameter. The original wooden bar from 1884 still sits inside the place and serves as a parts counter.

On Saturday, City Manager Debra Figone and Mayor Chuck Reed hosted 100 neighborhood residents at City Hall for a discussion and group exercise on how to balance the city’s budget and eliminate the $65 million dollar deficit.

Now is the time and this is the place and to let loose, uncork, and calmly discuss any issue that needs discussion.

Tom McEnery recently returned from a visit to Vietnam. This is the third article in a three-part series.

Perhaps it was never expressed better than by Graham Greene’s fictional journalist Fowler (played by Michael Caine in the recent film, The Quiet American) when he notes of the naïve American: “ I never knew a man who had better motive for all the trouble he caused.” As I visited Hue I thought of Tet, and the victories that broke the American will to continue,  those pyrrhic victories, and the carnage on both ends of that offensive and its aftermath.

When it comes to the workings of the San Jose City Government, the devil is too often in the details. The convention center expansion is a $300 million project, yet it has received little public scrutiny.

My vote for the Best Apocalyptic, Post-Suburban-Wasteland Photo Book of 2008 goes hands down to a glossy hardback aptly titled Frezno from Process Books. Photographer Tony Stamolis grew up in that Central Valley city, and spent six years chronicling the dreadful, doped-out, deranged and disregarded underbelly of the city whose airport code is FAT.

Tom McEnery recently returned from a visit to Vietnam. This is the second in a three-part series.

Beyond the Continental Hotel and the Cathedral of Notre Dame—we just missed a wedding there—is a place I was both anxious and nervous to see. It was once called the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. But in slight bow to political expediency,  it has a new name: The War Remnants Museum.