Why is it that during every Mardi Gras this city is overrun with troublemakers who scare anyone decent away? 

Businessess to Relocate at Fairgrounds

Just days after the Mardi Gras melee, and in anticipation of St. Patrick’s day celebrations, several city department heads called a community wide meeting with downtown business owners, property owners, and nightclub operators to announce downtown was being converted into one big nightclub.

There is an interesting battle brewing in Santa Clara County that will decide the future of transit, transportation and, perhaps, a politician or two.  It revolves around the recent county effort to place a half-cent sales tax increase on the June ballot. It is intended to bail out the BART project; maybe “bail out” is incorrect—more appropriately we might say “save.”  But it is being strangely combined with other county projects as a tax to fund several items other than BART, like hospitals and housing for low-income people. You see, put in this form the measure needs only a bare majority vote to pass, while as a transit measure, it would take an unlikely two-thirds vote.

I was driving in my car last night and an advertisement came on the radio supporting Michael Mulcahy’s campaign for mayor.  It wasn’t his platform that struck me but his opening statement that he is “not a politician.”  Has politics gone so wrong that someone who is running for public office would state such a claim? Isn’t it a little like interviewing doctors to help with what ails you and one doctor saying, “And best of all, I am not even a doctor!”

$4 Million Subsidy Approved for Bare-Breasted Bacchanalia

The City of San Jose has chosen Team San Jose, a California non-profit public benefit corporation led by Con-Vis Chief Dan Fenton, to organize and run a Girls Gone Wild Silicon Valley Edition that will take place in downtown San Jose in mid-August.

Yesterday, Single Gal gave her unvarnished look at the six who would be mayor, unfazed and unfettered by any personal knowledge or great familiarity with any of them. I am more encumbered—I know all of them and I like them all as people. Many of them have done good things on the council and in their public careers.  But this is not an election about who we like, though some make their choices in this manner.  It is about the type of city we wish to build for our children and grandchildren and want to live in ourselves. We need to decide who can best deliver this kind of city.

Alright, alright people!  Not enough politics on this site?  Well here is my two cents on the political scene, Single Gal style (as I am sipping Mai Tais in a tropical location far from San Jose).  Here are a couple of quick, initial thoughts on the candidates before the real fun begins!

Watchdog Groups Fear Censorship

Hot on the heels of Google’s successful implementation of their internet-censoring product in China, Mayor Gonzales has ordered the popular new totalitarian version of the search engine’s “Great Firewall” software to be immediately installed on his City Hall net servers. All internet searches originating within the city will now be routed through this new google.com/rg network.

Well, here we go—the race for mayor is on. With the addition of David Pandori, the field is now at six. Or is it? 

After a Friday night out in San Jose that consisted of a Sharks game and a trip to O’Flaherty’s for a few drinks, my group of friends and I decided that we wanted to go dancing.  But, since it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, did the desire to dance in San Jose mean I needed to take my life into my own hands? 

Might Lead to Pandemic of Political Recidivism

A recently released scathing report by San Jose State University found that many of the state’s mayors were not able to pass the California Mayoral Exit Exam now required in cities with a human population that is less than the number of its registered lobbyists.

Last night, Ron Gonzales gave the final State of the City address of his tenure as mayor. We invite our readers to comment on the text of the speech and reflect on how city politics have changed since Gonzales became mayor. What will be the legacy of the Gonzales years? What is your view of the state of our city and where we should go from here?

I know art is often spoken of in phrases like “art for art’s sake,” but when I survey the status of public art in our city, I just scratch my head. I can’t fathom what we are doing.  We all know the sad and bizarre story of the statue of Captain Fallon raising the flag. My fingerprints are on that series of mistakes and I share blame. And the Aztec god in Chavez Plaza is, likewise, a well-known saga. But those are the past and we need to move on.

I found myself throwing an impromptu Super Bowl party at my place on Sunday because I didn’t know one person who was having one.  Anyone who didn’t have anything else to do came over. I was thinking: does anyone even throw Super Bowl parties anymore, or is it just too much work?

Government Expected to Reduce City’s Dependence on Oxygen

Despite the surging population growth expected in San Jose with development of Coyote Valley—which estimates place at as many as 120 million people, or the equivalent of any 40 U.S. states combined—the city is expected to have a full supply of oxygen through early 2010.

The mayor’s annual State of the City speech just seems to get smaller and smaller. Where will it stop? When I moved from the old Parkside Hall to the new Fairmont in 1989—for what I hoped was a new, new State-of-the-City era—I thought it was going to be a great day; and it was, for a bit. After the Unity Breakfast, as we used to call it, the fire marshal—in a fit of pique—cited the event for overcrowding; not quite the ending I had hoped for. (The citation inspired a few negative articles and cartoons, including one depicting a dog with my head on it urinating on a fire hydrant labeled “FIRE CODE.”)