San Jose Inside

Joe Thornton wins the Art Ross Trophy as the National Hockey League’s point’s leader and Johnathan Cheechoo takes the Rocket Richard Award as the NHL’s top goal scorer. Not a bad April for the San Jose Sharks and the playoffs haven’t even started yet. But they start Friday night in Nashville (Live on Fox Sports Net) and the big question on everybody’s mind around here is, do the Sharks have enough to go all the way.

Of the five major candidates, four of them—Chavez, Mulcahy, Cortese and Reed—have received more than 30 percent of their total monies from development interests, and that’s fine.  This is what you would expect, given that land use and development is central in the decisions of any mayor, as well as being crucial to the fundraising of candidates. However, we must watch how they vote on critical items.

Will San Jose ever get a professional baseball team or are we holding onto a pipe dream?  I would love nothing more than the Oakland A’s to call San Jose their home, but honestly, we need to talk about the fact that this probably will never happen in this city.  Why do I bring this up now?  Because a few of my friends, who are strongly leaning towards voting for Michael Mulcahy in the mayor’s race, said that the things that were “important to them are important to Mulcahy.”  Amongst other things, this means they want a baseball team in San Jose (join the club) and they think Mulcahy is the man to get the deal done. 

But Many Still Choose Oppressive Dictatorship Over County Government

Good news seems to beget good news.  Just days after a community poll showed that an overwhelming majority (51%) of people living in San Jose think that their city is a good place to live, another independent and unrelated survey shows that most people prefer San Jose’s amenities to those found in Iraq.

There has been a great deal of second guessing and gnashing of teeth at the massive defeat suffered by the City of San Jose in their lawsuit with the county over the Fairgrounds Theater.  It was a sad result, no doubt.  The Monday morning quarterbacks are having a field day; it’s the most fun since the 49’ers blew a commanding lead to Detroit in that title game of the late fifties. 

I think that we all ought to slow down and take stock of this impending election. There has certainly been a lot of heated debate on this site lately on the relative merits of the candidates for mayor. If I have it correctly, much of it is centered on two candidates, Cindy Chavez and David Pandori.  Now, partisans would have you believe that Cindy is a “do-nothing” council member, a pawn of dark forces, while Pandori is portrayed as a loner DA incapable of getting along with even his family.  Not surprisingly, the truth is very different.

As I drive around San Jose, it’s obvious that each of the five major candidates (not including Stanley the Modified Pig) has a chokehold on their neighborhoods; if you look around downtown near San Pedro, the place is littered with Pandori signs, over off First and Second Streets you see Chavez signs, and you cannot walk in Willow Glen without tripping over a Mulcahy sign.  The same can be said for Berryessa with Chuck Reed and Evergreen with David Cortese.  Each neighborhood resident either knows their current or former council member, or is going with the “familiarity” factor, almost saying, “____ is from my neighborhood, so I am supporting them.”  But who is going to bridge the gap to gain crossover appeal in neighborhoods they are not from?

Part IV: Ralph Rambo’s Account Continues

“So Dad whipped up the horse and we made a harried tour of the disrupted city.  Certain sights were implanted in the mind of this 12-year old.  San Francisco suffered most from its great fire.  In that respect San Jose was more fortunate.  The [fire] control was excellent in comparison.  We arrived to see only one fire in progress on Second Street.  Remember this was before fire engines were motorized.  So the team or rather three abreast horses were tied across the street from the Jose Theater.  The fire was just one building, now under control.  But the street was strangely deserted.  Why was there no crowd?  Where were the usual spectators?”

Newly Formed “Big 6” Agree to Debate at Stephen’s Meats

Directly on the hooves of a report published in the journal “Nature Biotechnology”—stating that a cloned pig may have bacon that benefits the heart—a confident, modified Landrace pig named Stanley Pink has announced his candidacy for San Jose’s top job.

So far, most discussion about Measure A has been about whether we should pass a half-cent tax to help build BART.  A more important question is whether—even if we pass a new tax—we will get BART. I’m not saying the money will get siphoned off; I’m just asking if it is possible to build it.

The big debate is over; the big question remains.  I think most will agree that the mayoral debate last week was one of the best political forums in recent San Jose history and a resounding success.  The venue was spectacular, the format informative and—aside from the moderator’s too active participation—the five candidates were impressive. 

I was present at the first mayoral debate at the California Theatre last Thursday because I was interested to see how each of the five candidates would cope with the pressure of having to stand up to one another while answering some potentially difficult questions. 

Part III

I have told you a little about what happened in San Jose and San Francisco. Now let’s see what Ralph Rambo remembers about that fatal day and incident.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ralph Rambo, he was an eminent historian and cartoonist who wrote 14 pamphlets about life in Santa Clara Valley.  The following account is taken from his excellent booklet, E Day. The family’s windmill, their sole source of water, had been toppled by the quake.

Copycat Reality Show in Alum Rock Park to Decide Mayoral Contest

The five lesser-known mayoral candidates have upped the ante in this year’s mayoral contest by “calling out” the Big 5, as they have been labeled, to a winner-take-all Survivor contest in Alum Rock Park.

Kudos to Sal Pizarro, writer for the Mercury News, for his Monday mention of the ECV Clampers “most satisfactory” plaque ceremony in Alviso. Sal’s mention is a bit of a surprise being that Clampers are wascally wabbits whose rough edges (they drink beer) might have sawed against the grain of the PC police at the Mercury News.