It is a fact of life for downtown residents that Friday and Saturday nights are extremely noisy, especially if you live on or near Santa Clara Street. The constant stream of slow-cruising, high-volume subwoofer-armed cars is bad enough, but the loud music from the clubs and the groups of shouting, laughing merrymakers after midnight are just as bad. The only thing that makes it tolerable for those of us over 40 who live downtown is the fact that the police clear the streets at 2 a.m., and by 2:15, all is quiet. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t get any sleep on the weekends.

Just like the man falling off the high rise and yelling at the 89th floor, “so far, so good,” I am happy to report that the Reed Transition is going very well.  The sky is the limit as far as the expectations of many on the multi-faceted committee representing the richness of our city.  From the Environment subcommittee with Judy Stabile and Janet Gray Hayes, to the Public Safety area with Jose Salcido of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association and Bobby Lopez of the Police Officers’ Association, there is no shortage of ideas and energy. When the Education subcommittee gets the benefit of the county’s Superintendent, Colleen Wilcox, and also Jennifer Andeluz, the co-founder of Downtown College Prep, as well as Barbara Hansen of PACT, it’s a wonderful collision of concepts, spiced with practical knowledge.

Since we all spend enough time finding what’s wrong with our city and talking about it on this site, I thought that in the spirit of the season, I would sprinkle a little sugar instead of lumps of coal.  In sharing my weekend experience, I hope to show you that San Jose has a lot to offer—if you look closely enough.

Saturday night I took in a Sharks game at “The Tank”—still one of the best things you can do on a Saturday night in this town. For those who have never been to a game, especially a weekend game, it is a must.  The game is action-packed (and, seriously, what’s not to love about hockey men?). The people-watching is incredible and it’s just one of the best experiences you can have in San Jose, bar none. 

The four murders that took place over the first weekend of December brought Chief Davis before the public to call for enlarging the force. According to the chief, his department was stretched so thin to cover the investigations of the rare spate of killings that he had to draw officers and detectives from other duties. He wants to hire 600 additional people over the next five years and boost the force by 35 percent. But, as Scott Herhold pointed out in his column last week, given the high cost of each member of the force, can the city afford to acquiesce to the chief’s request?

Fire Stations, Jiffy Lubes to Become Drop Off Sites For Unwanted Shills

As a result of Chuck Reed’s overwhelming mandate in the mayoral election, and the uncertainty of how strict ethical rules will be enforced, several prominent, overpaid lobbyists have been turning up abandoned in various dumpsters, back alleys and gated country clubs in the valley.

The Evergreen issue is still looming next week, but it is not the only development item on the radar screen these days. After a stinging editorial in the Mercury News on Tuesday, the city council unanimously backed off approving a proposal to begin major urban development in the Almaden Valley greenbelt by supporting Council Member Nancy Pyle in her efforts to thwart the usual assortment of lobbyists and support current city growth restraints. Planning Director Joe Horwedel said the Almaden proposal by the Rancho San Vicente partnership is so far removed from city policy that is isn’t worth the cost of the planning work and an Environmental Impact Report. We may have dodged a bullet here, but the issue will surely surface again.

Once again the familiar refrain is being heard about the type of city and downtown that we wish to have in San Jose.  There have been many opinions, studies and assumptions and all of them have eventually arrived at the conclusion that to have a community in the central city that is worthy of a real downtown, what is needed is a concentration of people, families and, ergo, a real set of neighborhoods.  It is simple and, so far in our time, elusive.

I spent the weekend running around doing errands, Christmas shopping and trying to get in the spirit of the season, and found myself driving up and down Santa Clara Street and The Alameda quite frequently.  I was struck by the potential of this area of town, and wondered if there might be any “master plan” to make this more of a destination than just an area to drive through. 

I know I have visited this topic before, but I think it merits more discussion.  Those that have traveled down Santa Clara Street from the Arena and made that right turn on the bend to The Alameda, probably don’t even notice what is to the right and left of them—but I do.

In a little less than a month, the new regime takes over at City Hall. It’s been a long time coming and all of us are anxious to see how the balance of power shifts with the new mayor and council members and find out what’s on Mayor-elect Reed’s agenda for his first few months in office. I know that we are all hoping for the best and feel that our city needs some big changes from the fiasco of the Gonzales years and that we need to strike out in a new direction.

Members Pair Up To Tackle Ambitious Timeline

Immediately after putting his mayoral transition team together, Mayor-elect Chuck Reed paired up the 67 participants into two-member teams on Thursday night, with the express understanding that they would each accomplish one Reed Reform before the end of January.

“This was genius, one of the reasons the voters chose to put Mr. Reed in office,” said Reed Chief of Staff Pete Furman.  “There are 34 of these damn things and we can use the help.”

I have been reading about the Evergreen development issue over the past week with mounting alarm. Here we go again, with the tail wagging the dog. The developers are trying to call the shots, demanding an immediate decision, and many on the council are going along. The issue was supposed to come to a vote next Tuesday but I have learned this morning that it has been delayed one week to December 12. What’s the hurry? It doesn’t take much imagination to answer that one.

The elections are over and the nastiness is gone.  The problems of Washington and Sacramento now seem far away as hope is blossoming for a new mayor.  The sun is shining and it’s Christmastime in San Jose.

If you ever had the feeling that downtown San Jose was a dubious investment, you only have to take a quick trip into the central core of our city in the next few weeks to be disabused of that notion.  I would suggest to all a leisurely visit to Downtown Ice among the palms or a stroll through the amusement rides that dot the Chavez Plaza area.  You might also catch a movie at the Tech Museum’s IMAX Theater or in Camera 12; you can always get the compliments of the season at American Musical Theatre’s “Christmas Dreamland” and “The Nutcracker” at the CPA.  If none of those tickle your fancy, there is the reliable Rep’s performance of “A Christmas Story.” I always enjoy seeing the young kid stick his tongue to a frozen lamppost and then be deserted by his friends as they run back to class; it so reminds me of the relationship between mayor and council, except it’s colder at City Hall.

You can’t turn a page in the paper without the subject of stadiums dominating the news.  The Oakland A’s to Fremont, the 49ers to Santa Clara—it doesn’t stop!  Not that I don’t like hearing of sports teams coming closer to San Jose.  I mean, we did pass Detroit in size, didn’t we?  So by default we deserve more sports teams! 

When Allied forces liberated the concentration camps in Nazi Germany as they marched toward Berlin, local civilian residents were taken to the camps and forced to face the terrible truth that had been in their midst. In the years since, the debate has raged over the level of culpability shared by the German people in accepting the horrors of these camps throughout the war and saying or doing nothing to stop the heinous crimes against humanity being perpetrated in their name right in their backyards.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday—as a change of pace from our regular critical analyses and discussions of problems—I thought we might have an open forum on what our bloggers like best about living in San Jose and Santa Clara County. In the heat of our political and ideological battles, we sometimes forget how fortunate we are to live in such a special place. I’ll go first to start things off.

As much as I wanted to write this week about Thanksgiving, the Notre Dame–USC game, or the new James Bond movie, Monday’s article in the Mercury News, concerning the Reed transition, contained one set of comments that I could not ignore.  They came from the mouth, if not the mind, of Ms. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, leader of the South Bay Labor Council.  In them, she decried the “divisiveness” that could creep into the Transition Committee of Mayor-elect Chuck Reed, and her fear that “old families” would return to hegemony in our city.  It would be easy to let this set of vacuous comments go unanswered but, somehow, the lecturing of a person who just had her agenda, her candidates and her attempts to control the city repudiated in a historic rout, called out for a response. (It was almost as if Rummy began to lecture us now on military tactics for our future success in Iraq, or Kissinger—ah, but that’s another blog.) Such advice from Ellis-Lamkins falls not from weight but from absurdity.