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.

Every time the economy tanks, police departments warn people to be on guard against the inevitable uptick in crime. The logic is simple: the more desperate people get for work and money, the more they turn to lives of crime to bring in some extra cash. Fly got a firsthand view of the phenomenon last Wednesday when we found ourselves right in the middle of a bust.

The president of the San Jose Downtown Association, the group that represents downtown San Jose business and property owners, has called for the establishment of a police advisory commission. Though his position has not been officially endorsed by SJDA’s board, Art Bernstein says it is consistent with the objectives of the group’s advocacy arm.

San Jose needs “a body in between the police and city council so that every time there are issues of concern to the community, it doesn’t take a city council meeting,” Bernstein told Fly. A “citizen’s advisory group” would fill that role best. In an OpEd in Sunday’s Merc, Bernstein cites recent initiatives to charge downtown businesses for policing costs and notes that police have become “more aggressive with permit compliance, code enforcement and the closing down of some of downtown’s bars and clubs.”

In the same way that some Vietnamese love to hate Councilwoman Madison Nguyen, San Jose cops appear once again to have turned against one of their own—Councilman Pete Constant. In the latest episode of Constant vs. the Police Officer’s Association, the POA is furious that Constant, who is a former cop, openly opposes their pick, Dave Bacigalupi, to represent them on the Association of Retired San Jose Police Officers and Firefighters board, which is directly involved in deciding retirement for officers, among other things.

In a video that was circulated among City Hall insiders last week, then-District 8 Council Candidate Pat Waite can be seen addressing a rally in favor of the recall effort against District 7 Councilmember Madison Nguyen. Word of the appearance set off a storm of controversy, and Waite immediately began to backtrack. He sent an email to Nguyen in which he performed a verbal tap-dance to explain that the “rumor” of his support for the recall was untrue.

Will the Measure B sales tax approval for BART completion go down the tubes, like the convention center expansion did in 2002, leaving San Jose with a blue striped circus tent instead of a real building? Both measures were approved by a majority of voters, but failed to capture the two-thirds approval needed for tax measures.

This time, the margin’s even closer: four-tenths of a percent shy of the magic number at 66.27 percent, according to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters. (2002’s Measure F won 64.8 percent of the vote.)

It was a night of celebrations around Silicon Valley, from swanky spots in Mountain View and Willow Glen to the Fourth Street Bowl and the Popeye’s franchise on Santa Clara Street. San Jose Inside was on hand to record the historic night.

San Jose Police welcomed the nightclub Wet to town by closing the SoFA district, four blocks of it, from Reed to San Carlos streets between Market and Second.

San Jose Councilwoman Nora Campos made a brief appearance at City Hall recently when she parachuted into the middle of a council committee hearing, asking the group to vote a second time on a plan to extend living wages to all airport workers. The vote had already gone her way, mind you, but why shouldn’t city government drop everything to make her feel included?

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to local politics ... Little Saigon is back. After months of relative quiet on the Story Road front, the Vietnamese activists behind the push for the designation have returned with a double whammy.

At its recent September meeting, a healthy majority the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce board voted to support Measure B, despite the fact that some members had reservations about the BART tax. A fair question would be: Could they possibly come out against it, when one of their power players has so much at stake? Not only would the employees of Applied Materials benefit greatly from BART, but the company’s CEO, Mike Splinter, even signed on to the measure.

The buzz was that Applied Materials had even threatened to pull out of the Chamber unless the organization supported the BART tax.

San Jose City Councilman Pete Constant isn’t happy with the Police Officers Association for trying to ruin his weekend barbecue. According to Constant, the POA, frustrated by the lack of a union contract, attempted to “pressure” the San Jose Police and Firefighters Retirees Association to back out of their commitment to barbecue at his District 1 event this past weekend.

It seemed like the grassroots effort to name a San Jose neighborhood Little Italy was cruising along with the grace of a Ferrari on a Formula One track. But in case anyone was getting ready to start belting out “Funiculì, Funiculà” prematurely, the lessons of Little Saigon should have been a warning: Members of an ethnic group don’t always sing to the same sheet music.

The horse head in the bed in this case was an Aug. 26 email grenade lobbed by one of the godfathers of the local Italian-American community to a mailing list of about 75 people, most of whose last names end in a vowel.

Well, the district attorney may have dropped charges, but exonerated lobbyist Sean Kali Rai isn’t ready to sing “Kumbaya” yet. When political consultant Jay Rosenthal, who along with Kali Rai was an aide to former San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, tried to shake Kali Rai’s hand at the Chamber of Commerce’s annual COMPAC picnic a couple of weeks ago, he says Kali Rai responded with a comment so colorfully vulgar that even we won’t print it.

Home builders are notorious for fighting building mandates, but in the case of San Jose’s green building proposal, which is going before the council soon, they’re apparently onboard. Hmm, maybe that’s because what San Jose is proposing really isn’t that strict? Compare San Jose’s proposed ordinance to what Palo Alto has already implemented for green building, and it’s clear that Palo Alto has taken the lead.

Put down that McNugget and step away from the honey mustard sauce—the ban is back! Though her proposal to ixnay fast food restaurants temporarily in San Jose failed at the committee level recently, Councilwoman Nora Campos has directed her staff to charge ahead on the issue while she’s on maternity leave. Those staffers say they plan to reintroduce the proposal before the entire council within the next few weeks.