San Jose Inside

Research Agency Says Medical Waste Valuable

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced its plans to build a $1 billion state-of-the-art research facility in San Jose after the city’s Guadalupe landfill was identified as the nation’s tenth largest repository for untreated medical waste.

“Schmoozer of the Year” Stone Thrives Again

According to research by Joint Venture Silicon Valley Group, the demise of society and the human race could be linked to Blackberry usage. Wednesday’s mobile device outage, although infuriating to many addicts, was hailed as a watershed event that researchers say the valley needed in order to “reconnect with others and thrive into the future.”

When I was a child, my family and I would patronize the downtown. I fondly remember attending shows at the Center for the Performing Arts and the San Jose Symphony. Like many families, we would walk to Original Joes after the shows.

The arts act like candles for the downtown, shedding light on the wonderful museums, restaurants and other amenities that draw people out of their homes and to the city center.  Whether it’s theater or music, the arts brings people to the downtown core. Without the arts, our downtown would have ceased to exist.

I always feel like we are so lucky to have events like Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8 in our town. However, it’s interesting to note that as each event comes and goes, there are those who love every minute and naysayers who react negatively about our city as a result.

And the End of the Storied Santana Row Boycott

Fiascos always have precedents as well as postscripts.  The mistake of land use in the Santana Row project was based on the same model that led to the destruction of downtown’s retail in the fifties and sixties. The postscript was written when Silicon Valley and Bay Area leaders challenged the absurd spending priorities of the California Transportation Commission last week. Chuck Reed, Carl Guardino and the others struck a blow for all of us when they got the state’s commission overseeing this spending to change their priorities.  Feeding the economic engine of the world here, our valley,  is crucially important to the US economy, and stands in stark contrast to some overpass in Tulare County or a “bridge to nowhere” in Modoc County. Every commuter in our valley should be grateful that Mayor Reed and the others were successful. It is the latest battle in the allocation of bond proceeds, but not the last.

San Jose’s best annual event began its 17th year last night at the California Theatre with a Bay Area premiere showing of Indian director Mira Nair’s “The Namesake,” from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. This was quite a coup for our film festival as Nair’s previous film, “Vanity Fair,” starring Reese Witherspoon and former Cinequest honoree Gabriel Byrne, got a big Hollywood-blowout release. The filmmakers were on hand at the opening gala afterward.

Well, the committee that has been debating the future of downtown’s nightclub culture and, in the truest sense, the “future” of downtown itself, seems to have figured it out. Unfortunately, I fear that they have it very, very wrong.

We seem to spend a lot of time on this site bemoaning the fact that San Jose is perceived as a second-class member of the “ten largest cities in the U.S.” club (we don’t get the big convention or we don’t get the big team). Why? In a blog earlier this week, some cynic even compared San Jose to Toledo and Omaha. The comparison might be apt if we were surrounded by the vacuum of the prairie, but we aren’t.

A few weeks ago, I attended MacWorld for my company.  As I was driving to San Francisco, fighting traffic every step of the way, I had a thought: Why am I driving to San Francisco for this show? 

After I paid my $23 for parking (and we think we have issues here) near the Moscone Center and got inside the convention center, I was awed by the size and scale of this show and the sheer volume of people attending.  I know, our rinky-dink convention center does not have the capability of hosting a show anywhere near that size; but why should that be?  Why can’t we get it together as a city to make our convention center a place where these world-class shows can come? 

Shoppers Skeptical as Several Cannibals Found Eating Outside Tommy Bahama’s

Upscale shopping center Santana Row—70 shops, 20 restaurants, 5 spas, 1 hotel, 24 hours—has now added, “10 security check points” to its slogan in a bold, and some say overreaching, plan to rid the mall of violence.

Millions Flock to “Charlotte’s Web” to See Supernatural Occurrence

San Jose was hit with a much-needed Christmas miracle this season that has sent millions of visitors, tourists, and skeptical gawkers into downtown with their spin-off dollars landing in happy restaurants and welcoming hotels.

If our new mayor brings his efforts to bear on three areas of municipal government in the New Year—ethics, development and the budget, and our downtown—the citizens of our city will be very well served. 

It is a fact of life for downtown residents that Friday and Saturday nights are extremely noisy, especially if you live on or near Santa Clara Street. The constant stream of slow-cruising, high-volume subwoofer-armed cars is bad enough, but the loud music from the clubs and the groups of shouting, laughing merrymakers after midnight are just as bad. The only thing that makes it tolerable for those of us over 40 who live downtown is the fact that the police clear the streets at 2 a.m., and by 2:15, all is quiet. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t get any sleep on the weekends.

Sunday was the start of what I hope is a great tradition in San Jose: the Rock and Roll Half Marathon. For a day, San Jose was a place you could find cool bands, and people cheering on local and foreign runners not only downtown, but through neighborhood streets.  This is exactly the type of event we need here in San Jose—one lasting not just for a year or two, but strong enough to be sustained over the years until it becomes a staple in the culture of the city.

Recently a new shopping mall, San Jose Market Center, opened up right outside of downtown on Coleman Ave and Taylor Street. It boasts retail giants such as Target, PetSmart, Office Depot and Cost Plus, while also offering services such as nails, tanning and even dentistry.  But the interesting thing is now that restaurants are popping up in the Market Center (Panera Bread, Red Brick Pizza, and soon Unamas and Chili’s), people are leaving downtown for the ease and the convenience of the mini-mall.  Is the death toll sounding once again for downtown?

It is time to look at the pros and cons of our summer. Just what exactly are the pluses and minuses that can be attributed to our city as we approach the middle of August? A big plus is the Zero One Festival that is occurring this week.  On the harmony front, once again Music in the Park is drawing big crowds, but the enthusiastic revelers and music lovers are much less a source of business to the downtown bar and restaurant owners than the Downtown Association would like you to believe. Some think that they are barely registering on the Richter scale of monetary activity among the vast majority of the businesses downtown.  And the opinion of the police is that the crowds are too massive and it is not a particularly engaging use of Chavez Plaza.