San Jose Inside

Last week, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom held a press conference to promote the city’s new campaign to encourage San Francisco residents to keep their consumer dollars in San Francisco. “SHOP SF-Get More” provides San Francisco residents with incentives to do their Christmas shopping within city limits so that San Francisco receives the tax revenues. Where’s San Jose’s “SHOP SJ” campaign?

By Erin Sherbert
Madison Nguyen rolls up in a Lexus SUV and parks behind Lighthouse Café, a popular Vietnamese coffee shop off King Road. She greets a handful of volunteers, rattling off a few words in Vietnamese as she unlocks the door to the headquarters of her anti-recall campaign. It’s pure coincidence that this small space next door to the coffee shop is the same spot where Nguyen hosted her 2005 victory party, the night she was elected to San Jose’s City Council.

The city of San Jose already had a structural budget deficit without the economy crashing. Our ongoing expenses are higher then revenue coming into the city. Throw on a recession, and the numbers just get worse and our options more drastic to manage a $65 million shortfall. Do we balance the budget by more service cuts to the neighborhoods? Postpone hiring police officers? Delay opening new libraries and community centers? Outsource non-core services? Work furloughs? Layoffs? Eliminate any program or service that overlaps with other government agencies?

The reality is clear and trying to hide from reality is not going to help. Decisions will most likely be ugly, politically unpopular and emotionally draining.

Anything you’ve got to say, about anything at all, this is the place to say it. It’s SJI’s weekly roundup of random intelligence and opinion.

The idea sounded so weird, it was as if someone had snuck a clip from The Onion into Fly’s Sunday New York Times. But there it was: NYT columnist Maureen Dowd, writing about the work of local newspaper reporters being outsourced to India. It seems that a Southern California publisher by the name of James Macpherson has hired reporters in Bangalore to write about everything from the Pasadena Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony to city politics. The smalltime operator even has a name for this neat trick of buying with rupees and selling for dollars: He calls it “glocal” journalism.

It gets better (or worse): big-time newspaper publisher Dean Singleton, owner of our very own San Jose Mercury News (and every other Bay Area newspaper but the Chron) has endorsed the idea.

Accepts Job at New York Times

Just minutes after Columbia University awarded its 93rd Annual Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for Investigative Blogging to SanJoseInside’s own John McEnery IV, the prominent blog site’s featured and most decorated writer accepted a new post as editorial director of the New York Times, effective immediately.

Since there just aren’t enough documentaries about 19th-century Mexican banditos who were hung in San Jose, resident author and publisher Charlie Trujillo decided to begin making one. The scalawag under discussion is every local historian’s favorite forgotten troublemaker, Tiburcio Vasquez, who rampaged across California during the post–Gold Rush era.

New History San Jose Exhibit Portrays Santa Clara County’s World War II

Those of us younger than 60 usually think of World War II in terms of our fathers or grandfathers battling enemies in far-off Pacific island jungles and snow-covered European fields, or through iconic images of Iwo Jima, D-Day and the atomic bomb. We often forget that the last formally declared U.S. war also absorbed the entire population of our country in a massive coordinated effort to defeat ideologically driven enemies that really did threaten our very existence as a nation. A fascinating new History San Jose (HSJ) exhibition in the Pacific Hotel Gallery at History Park in Kelley Park shows how Santa Clara County, on the western domestic front of the war, played a significant part in that effort and how the war affected the everyday lives of people in the valley.

The artist Christian Moeller has created numerous public-art pieces, including this installation in Pasadena

A few weeks ago, the San Jose City Council approved preliminary plans to build a huge mural at the airport. As reported by the Mercury News, a 76,000-square-foot mural, designed by German artist Christian Moeller, will be installed on one of the walls of the new rental car garage currently under construction at the airport. The project will cost $1.1 million, stand over 60 feet tall, and stretch as long as 1,200 feet!

I was in Ireland last week with a group of Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists when a chapter from the past came to mind. It concerned the groundbreaking for a new venture launched in Ireland in 1988 by a Silicon Valley pioneer, the venerable Intel, which I attended along with a group of Irish leaders, the American Ambassador, and the eminent Dr. Gordon Moore. It was to be the beginning of what would become the roaring Celtic Tiger that transformed that small island. Intel would rise as the model for Silicon Valley’s rapid expansion in Ireland and Europe. It was good for Ireland and good for our Valley.

The voice of experience, and a word of temperance, in the wake of India’s 9/11

For three days, South Asian Americans sat transfixed to their televisions, watching in horror as the bodies of innocent men, women and children lay bullet-ridden and burned in hotels and community centers in Mumbai. Many are calling these events “India’s 9/11,” and in that framing, South Asian Americans have a unique viewpoint that can inform India’s reaction to terror.

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.

On Thanksgiving Day I participated in the Turkey Trot, a 5-10K run that takes place Downtown. That same day I attended the 63rd annual Big Bone Game between Lincoln High School and San Jose Academy.

The Turkey Trot is a great way to get people out of the house and into our Downtown for a good cause. I spoke to residents from Almaden Valley, Willow Glen, greater Downtown, Alum Rock, Cambrian, the Rose Garden and even Los Gatos, who were all among the approximately 8,000 participants at this year’s event.

Even during this weekend of gratitude and joy, there is plenty to rant & rave about. And this is the place to do it.

Food for Thought

While you would be forgiven for thinking the national situation is looking pretty dark on Thanksgiving Day 2008, consider the bleak view President Lincoln must have had from the White House when he declared the national holiday on October 3, 1863.

After a period where it looked like the Union would not be spared, Lincoln finally had a few victories to celebrate, but at a terrible price. A year before, the worst single battle casualties in American history had been suffered at Antietam. The Union forces prevailed and Lee’s army was pushed out of Maryland. It gave Lincoln the strength and political will to issue the Emancipation Proclamation the following week on September 22, 1862.