San Jose Inside

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.

Two years ago, San Jose’s Sunshine Reform Task Force began their work on restoring our citizens’ trust with more public participation and scrutiny and real reform. The mayor and the council, who have walked the walk and done much to open up meetings, deserve our thanks. The city now gets agendas out ten days in advance. This is a huge improvement and minimizes the chance of big surprises like the Grand Prix debacle.

The time I knew Obama really had arrived to a younger generation is when his bootleg “Change” shirt was getting more requests at our Hip Hop Co-Op Shop than the Kanye West gear, or all the various shirts with prints of guns, which is like 80 percent of them. The young and hip in San Jose have been taking that iconic image of Obama’s face, and silk-screening their own versions of the shirts, adding symbols, and making new color combinations to match their vintage Air Jordans. They have made Obama theirs to keep.

In Memory of Henry Schiro

Last Friday afternoon I heard “Moon River” played for San Jose arts patron and supporter Henry Shiro at his funeral mass. As most in the community know, Henry spent the better part of thirty years raising money for, participating in, and cheerleading on behalf of San Jose’s arts and culture community, and more specifically, music organizations such as San Jose Jazz, the Children’s Musical Theatre, the Steinway Society, and more recently, the Mexican Heritage Corporation (MHC) and Plaza. They played a sampling of his favorite tunes at the service. Based on the SRO crowd at Friday’s mass, I’d say he succeeded in his mission of community service.  Also, he had great taste in music.

With each Labor Day weekend that comes and goes, we realize that we have not quite had enough of summer and that the chill of winter is not far off.  But more than that, beyond the change of weather and the start of school, it’s the end to the freewheeling, weekends-away, vacations-with-the-kids lifestyle of the summer months.  So here’s to embracing the change that we all dread, and the things we look forward to.  What would you like to see happen this winter in San Jose?

Last week, the San Jose City Council voted to demolish the old library building. Did you read about it in the paper? Neither did I. Where will the city move all of the city employees who work in the building? How much will it all cost? This is a story that should have received coverage.

City Hall Diary

Labor Day is a time that many of us celebrate with BBQs and rest. It’s a day to acknowledge the work of everyone in our society. However, many people work on Labor Day, including but not limited to 9-1-1 dispatchers, grocery store clerks, nurses, and sewage treatment plant workers, etc.

Ranting and raving is becoming quite a tradition on San Jose Inside. This is the place where it all happens so let ‘er rip!

Some Discovered in Mexico

In an interview with SanJoseInside.com late last night, Governor Schwarzenegger reiterated his frustration with Republican legislators by announcing that he had hunted down, captured and dragged several GOP members back to the Capitol to face the $15.2 billion budget shortfall.

I JUST COULDN’T RESIST yet another episode of The Gong Show, er, the city of San Jose’s Rules and Open Government Committee, since last week’s episode involved a proposed citywide moratorium on all new fast food restaurants.

A Conversation with Linda Ronstadt

The hugely successful San Jose International Mariachi and Latin Music Festival is upon us again. Now in its seventeenth year, the festival begins on September 7 at the HP Pavilion. This year’s concerts feature a long, impressive list of top mariachi and Latin artists, including names that would be familiar to the average music fan such as Lila Downs, Ersi Arvizu (with Ry Cooder) and Linda Ronstadt, who is also the festival’s chief adviser.

Nobody really knows how well the campaign is going for the committee attempting to recall San Jose Councilwoman Madison Nguyen. The group has been secretive about how many signatures they’ve collected so far. But what did surface this week is the number of people who have asked for the city to remove their names from the recall petition they signed.

Last week’s discussion of the Valley Fair/Westfield behemoth mall complex and its fleet of department stores is linked in one way to the more recent and dubious history of the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. Yes, they both have “fair” in their titles, but more precisely, they both offer lessons and opportunities to do a few things right in the development of key properties in our city.