Allow me to quack poetic about the efforts of a local team of artists from San Jose State University who collaborated behind the scenes on an installation for last year’s 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge in downtown San Jose. Just last month, the project Tantalum Memorial took home first prize at transmediale.09, an international festival for contemporary art and digital culture in Berlin.
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Public Market Deserves Support
Guest Column
By Steve Borkenhagen
Downtown San Jose has suffered for decades from a severe lack of retail activity. We have a number of entertainment venues, museums, restaurants, bars, offices and (more recently) housing, but we have not had a vibrant retail area in the heart of our city since the 1960s. Generations of South Bay residents have never experienced retail excitement in Downtown San Jose. The San Jose Public Market has the potential to change this.
The Superintendent Should Believe
Captain Sullenberger flies an airplane and Superintendent Skelly leads a school district, both potentially perilous professions. Captain Sully became a hero and Superintendent Skelly became a goat. What is the difference that led to these two men being characterized so differently by the media?
Standing Room Only
Last week at the Rules committee, there was a standing- room-only crowd to support our request to use $1.9 million to fund the citywide school crossing guard program on a temporary basis (three fiscal years) out of the $9 million the City receives from the tobacco settlement monies.
Fast Train on its Way
The Transport Politic blog reports today that California’s High Speed Rail project will get a huge boost from the federal stimulus bill. According to the story, HSR is in line to receive $8 billion, “the largest single expenditure on rail in United States history.”
Watch Dog’s Morning Roundup
By Watch Dog Silicon Valley
Sam Liccardo’s downtown compromise; Valley Medical’s day off; and raves for both the federal stimulus package and the state budget.
Watch Dog on Tesla and Tasers
SJI’s favorite news-blogger, Watch Dog Silicon Valley, broke yet another story on Tesla Motors yesterday (and followed up this morning). It seems that the young electric car company, until recently considered San Jose’s Great Green Hope, has in fact secured $350 million from the federal government, BUT is in “late-stage negotiations” to build a plant in New Mexico.
Watch Dog’s Tesla Scoop
When the Merc, KCBS and the Business Journal reported yesterday that Tesla had shifted gears and reversed direction, and might not be building a plant in San Jose after all, it was old news to readers of Watch Dog Silicon Valley.
Count Five Avenue
Last month saw the passing of John Byrne, lead singer of the ‘60s San Jose garage-rock band Count Five. He penned the immortal fuzzed-out 1966 hit Psychotic Reaction, which peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard charts and was listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Top 500 songs that shaped rock & roll. A whole two years before Dionne Warwick sang that tune we all know and despise, the Count Five staged its famous promo picture, wearing Dracula-style capes in front of the Winchester Mystery House.
Drunk-in-Public Taskforce Must Be Committed to Action
Are taskforces where community hopes goes to die? I am about to find out. On Jan, 15, I went to the first meeting of the drunk-in-public taskforce, a group assembled by the council as their response to a heated public forum back in November.
From Saigon to Hanoi
Tom McEnery recently returned from a visit to Vietnam. This is the third article in a three-part series.
Perhaps it was never expressed better than by Graham Greene’s fictional journalist Fowler (played by Michael Caine in the recent film, The Quiet American) when he notes of the naïve American: “ I never knew a man who had better motive for all the trouble he caused.” As I visited Hue I thought of Tet, and the victories that broke the American will to continue, those pyrrhic victories, and the carnage on both ends of that offensive and its aftermath.
Saigon: the Second Look
Tom McEnery recently returned from a visit to Vietnam. This is the second in a three-part series.
Beyond the Continental Hotel and the Cathedral of Notre Dame—we just missed a wedding there—is a place I was both anxious and nervous to see. It was once called the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. But in slight bow to political expediency, it has a new name: The War Remnants Museum.
Post-Partisan Pork
Is San Jose’s nonpolitical mayor in a position to attract federal clean-tech dollars?
Silicon Valley business leaders will be keeping an eye on what happens immediately following inauguration day, when, analysts predict, President Barack Obama may address his plan to shift the nation toward clean technology—an emerging local business sector.
Saigon: The Original
“My father insists that I call it Saigon—you see, he was in the Southern Army,” was the simple, direct way our guide informed us why he used the city’s old name. The comment was made in near perfect English. “Sometimes we say Ho Chi Minh City,” he conceded, “but I prefer Saigon.” This was our introduction to a place so much in American minds for the last forty years, just recently a significant factor in San Jose politics.
Living History
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” a father tells his son while standing outside the cyclone fences being erected for the inaugural. He was, of course, talking about tickets. And if you know a congressperson, you had a chance of getting the Ticket of the Century.
Tesla in Trouble?
Watch Dog Silicon Valley reported yesterday that Tesla Motors faces new competition in the world of cool electric roadsters, and speculates that the company is unlikely to come to turn San Jose into the green Detroit that some have imagined.
