San Jose, 10 Reasons Why It Ain’t Cool
10. Not sure anyone in San Jose would know what to wear, or not wear, at the Burning Man.
9. Oakland A’s owner Lew Wolff just gave up on his plan to move the team to San Jose. There has been talk of bringing the NBA to San Jose, just don’t let the Golden State Warriors hear about it.
8. The Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. (International only because you can fly to and from Mexico.) The Light Rail goes nowhere near the airport.
7. The IBSF World Snooker Team Championships were played in San Jose from August 16 - 26 No one knew–did anyone care?
6. The fountain at Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park in downtown San Jose has made at least seven people sick.
5. The San Jose Repertory Theatre just got spanked for overspending. They had the guts to bring in big names like Holly Hunter and Lynn Redgrave. They were presumptuous enough to put on plays chosen for their artistic significance. The cheeky set dresser forgot to use orange crates, and built elaborate sets. Now they need a $1 million bailout, so the shows can go on with out splendor.
4. The nearest decent shopping is a $12 cab ride from downtown. The nearest decent nightlife is a $120 cab ride up Hwy. 101..The Rev. Jorge Hernandez of St. Boniface Church, blessed taxicabs during the annual ‘Blessing of the Taxicabs and the Drivers’, in San Francisco. The Taxicabs in San Jose are not blessed, though I’m sure that the passengers do pray.
3. We just had a Jazz Festival with almost no Jazz. We can’t even begin to compete with the Little Fox, downtown Redwood City, or The Mountain Winery in Saratoga…
2. Some mighty humorous public art lurks downtown.
1. ”Metroblogging San Jose” does not exist.
All this, and it’s the largest city in the Bay Area, and 10th largest in the United States! hahaha. Great examples of how the smaller surrounding towns of Redwood City and such kick more ass than the “metropolitan” San Jose. And howcome when I go downtown, I feel like I”m driving through a horse corral? It has a lot of potential, it’s just that the only thing people care about is money and the silicon valley mentality.
oooh, the poo sculpture!
I got a chance to ask Mayor McEnry about that statue when he visited my California history class…
Me: So what’s up with that piece of shit downtown?
Him: You mean the mural on the convention center?
At least he had a sense of humor about it!
Yes, it’s true, San Jose sucks. Funny thing, they’re trying REALLY HARD to suck. I mean really, what city in the history of civilization had more opportunity to excel than San Jose during the ’80s ’90s and this decade? The whole Silicon Valley thing was TRYING to dump piles of money on the place, yet it’s one big urban sprawl of a ghetto.
Yet they excel only at sucking. There’s nothing to do in San Jose. Largely because the city forces the place to suck. crushes anyone who wants to do anything creative or even open a little sore or coffee shop.
There’s nothing to do. There’s not even a mall in San Jose. Nowhere near downtown anyway. Hell, they don’t even have a decent grocery store.
I could go on for hours… don’t get me started.
Yes, I know my list of 10 is just a drop in the bucket of wasted money.
The 80’s and 90’s? San Jose has failed since at least the 60’s, with the same pile of cash coming in the whole time.
Unfortunately places like San Jose reinforce the idea of Urban Planning as a zero-sum game. Does there have to be a North Jersey for every New York? Apparently so.
hear hear on #10. I feel like SJ is just a vast amount of people online, articulate, with stuff to say, so why no sj-metblogs? I fear it’s because SJ has the worst body image of any city I know.