Businessess to Relocate at Fairgrounds
Just days after the Mardi Gras melee, and in anticipation of St. Patrick’s day celebrations, several city department heads called a community wide meeting with downtown business owners, property owners, and nightclub operators to announce downtown was being converted into one big nightclub.
The controversial decision was made in reaction to the eighth straight year of Mardi Gras violence, which kept the San Jose police force busy for several early morning hours, costing taxpayers $73 million in overtime pay.
“We thought long and hard about this one,” said one department head. “We can either keep paying the exorbitant amounts of money to control these testosterone fueled drunken assemblages or we can save a lot of money, pack up and move on.”
The cost savings from policing alone will be used to relocate all of downtown’s businesses and restaurants to a master planned development at the county fairgrounds, complete with a music hall, baseball and soccer stadiums and 72 Starbuck’s - most hotels however, have made the decision to stay downtown and cater to their new clientele by letting rooms by the hour.
Mauricio Mejia, the Chairman of the Downtown Association’s Nightclub Committee, has been pushing for this change for years. “What a win,” he said. “This is not only a victory for all downtown nightclubs, it is a day of celebration for thugs everywhere in the Bay Area.”
One night clubber summed it up succinctly when she said, “Now we can hizzle out downtown and get crunk without any 5-0 hassling us!”
Downtown’s new hours will be 8pm - 2am Tuesday through Sunday, closed Mondays, with drink specials posted daily on the city’s website. A cover charge of $10 will be charged to all men without conspicuous tattoos and any women not wearing hot pants.
Yikes, the triumvirate of Gonzo, Cindy Chavez and Rick Doyle would have a cow if anything were ever moved out of Downtown… absolute heresy!!! Leave it Downtown and add some amusement park games… pitching dimes and maybe a shooting gallery or two.
If all of downtown was a nightclub, we need some super exclusive velvet ropes and big bouncers on the outskirts of the San Jose city line. If they just pretend its Studio 54 and check for credentials (employment, credit report, education of college and beyond and an IQ test) and then don’t let anyone in – we will have no problems!
Eric: There’s that suburbanite mantra—free parking—again.
I was in The City yesterday. The civic center garage was full, but I managed to find a metered space open—25 cents gets you SIX minutes!
Don’t tell Abi, the Parking Czar, or we’re doomed
I think that the solution to the problems downtown with the drunks and nightclubs is that it is dark. If we can somehow bring back the electric light town that was on santa clara and market street we could keep it like daytime always and we wouldnt have the problems that darkness brings.
Actually, Dan #1 has the better idea—keep businesses etc. dowtown and move all entertainment to the fairgrounds. Wall it up, and policing goes down to almost nothing. Put a satellite jail in there, too, for the revelers to sleep it off without driving. Bring in Rollerball.
Additional savings would prevail by filling the police bicycle patrol tires with helium. This lofty view from overhead could instantly pinpoint trouble areas. No pollution for this crowd solving solution.
#4, You forgot to mention that anyone wearing oversized Raider jerseys, cut offs, and tatoos showing above the neck line will not be allowed within San Jose city limits. Only those wearing khakis, Banana Republic shirts, and ECCO shoes will be allowed in. Oh, they have to show proof of purchase, otherwise they shall immediately be booked for suspicion of shoplifting.
This is a great idea.
We can just keep the festivals rolling year round – Cinco de Mayo, Brew-ha-ha, Music in the other Park, America’s festival, etc.
Put kegs on every corner and let the good times roll!
News Item:
Santa Clara County officials today filed suit to force the City of San Jose to build an entertainment facility on the city’s downtown.
Supervisor Blanca Alvarado is quoted as saying “The Fairgrounds are no place for San Jose’s lowlifes and gang bangers, except during the fair.”
The move comes after a report in San Jose Inside that San Jose officials were considering a bold new plan to move the city’s nightclub district to the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds.
When asked for her reaction to the suit Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez told reporters “Let me talk to Phaedra and get back to you.”
Mayor Ron Gonzales, who formerly sat on the VTA Board, voiced his support for the Fairgrounds entertainment district. The Mayor said through a spokesman “It is important that we keep the BART-to-Fairgrounds project alive and, by golly, this is just the ticket.”
Gonzales also announced a new “Dime on the Dollar” sales tax initiative to bolster the BART/Fairgrounds proposal. Said the Mayor: “Why screw around with these piddly-ass percentages? Fractions just drive the finance department nuts.”
The proposal drew support from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group which immediately produced a poll showing overwhelming support for the “Dime on the Dollar” sales tax. 53% preferred it to a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. 39% said they’d go with the stick. 8% said they would check with Phaedra and get back to us.
Downtown advocates still do not GET IT
How many more times do you need to be told?
The customers you want have many options with free parking about where to spend their money.
We don’t really care what other cities do or your grips about all downtowns having paid parking or your parking validation program
Downtown will not be competitive and will not have a lot of customers on non event nights or weekends UNTIL you and downtown merchants GET FREE EASY TO FIND PARKING ALL THE TIME
You need to realize and have as your motto –
Downtown competes for cusomer’s money with San Jose and other local cities shopping areas who have free easy to find parking, easy street, access, great directional signage, great customer service and things we want to include no worry public safety
You are responsible, not us your customers, to attract us or we will continue to go somewhere to spend our money
You are losing the customer competition, start winning it by changing your attitude and the downtown.
We have made our choice and it is not downtown unless YOU, not us change
GET FREE DOWNTOWN EASY TO FIND PARKING ALL THE TIME and we might come downtown
Mal News Rules!
For a community obsessed with the ethnic proportion of achievement, I’m puzzled why neither the media nor local politicos have chosen to highlight the substantial (some might say overwhelming) representation of young people of color amongst those who, Tuesday night, achieved the status of rioters? I am simply at a loss for words at how the overused excuses for failure and poor performance in school and the workplace—poverty, poor language and social skills, cultural barriers, transportation difficulties, lack of health insurance, etc.—never seem to prevent the Fat Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo, or Weekend Cruise idiots of color from making their appointed rounds. I realize that my conclusions are based only on raw observation, but when it comes to these destructive efforts these folks seem remarkably committed.
Just this week the Mercury featured an Op-Ed piece about the under-representation of minorities in the legal profession. The piece, relying only on raw statistics, accused the people of this state of denying those of color “access” to law school and the legal profession. Amazingly, the piece was co-authored by Justice Carlos Moreno of the state Supreme Court. Clearly, either Carlos Moreno was never denied access, or he considers himself such a superior specimen that he succeeded despite the insurmountable barriers. Well, judging by the analysis he offered in his contribution to the Mercury, his Supreme title notwithstanding, Carlos Moreno is hardly superior. The man had access.
That aside, could it be that Justice Moreno’s would-be/should-be lawyers were in that mob of Fat Tuesday idiots? Is it possible that the tragic under-representation of certain minorities in certain professions is due to their disproportionate responsibilities to provide our cities with mayhem and destruction? Are we, with our many strange new holidays and celebrations, simply draining the energy and brilliance right out of this group of potential barristers?
We need a new approach. The rioters, it seems, have been right all along. There is no need for the cops at these affairs. A better idea would be to assign those ultra-sensitive, Justice Moreno-like finger-pointers to downtown riot duty, so they could use their statistics and quotas to relieve the rioters of their exhausting duties and get them back to put down their weapons and beer bottles and get themselves on the professional track.
Otherwise, some of us might continue to think them simply stupid and violent.
Did I misread what John said suggested about moving all the regular customer facitiies, resturants etc to the County fairground and leave downtown to the clubs and gang bangers and low lifes ?
#2 and # 11 seem to be reading – Move the clubs, gangs and problems to the County fairgrounds not leave them downtown
What is it – Where is the “police nightclub district ” – seems like many are confused
Cool: we now have point/counterpoint satire from the dueling satirists—John McE & Mal.
Keep it up, fellas, we all need some chuckles on a Friday.
Mal, Finfan, you two always make navigating over to SJI worthwhile.
Have a great weekend everybody.
Great idea John! I’ve been thinking along the same lines for quite awhile now. Bring all entertainment and sports onto the huge, mostly vacant property of the County Fairgrounds. You could have cops from 2 agencies there to control the mayhem. It’s within the city limits so San Jose would have their finest there and it’s owned by the Country which has their own cop agency called the Sheriff’s Office (Laurie’s Rangers). With the big new development going in on the old GE property at Tully and Monterey there would be a draw for tens of thousands of people to the area to the two sites. Maybe the Quetzalcoatl sculpture could be move to a place of honor at the main entrance. Keep it up John. The Friday blogs are great!
Re the move of clubs to the County Fairgrounds:
It should work as long as there is Free and Abundant parking. (That’s why malls work, why downtown Sunnyvale works.) No one seems to believe this except the tens of thousands of folks who don’t go downtown because un-free and un-abundant parking.
And I have a concern that drunks will disturb the animals in the San Jose Zoo. Animals are civililized and go to bed when the sun goes down.
Dan,
Actually before California was Mexican it was Spanish.
Before it was Spanish it was populated by Native Americans.
Before it was Native American the Salamanders and other native wildlife ruled supreme. Taxes were very low during this period.
Uh oh, here we go again…
Mal
So, Mr. Sturges (#18), I am “insulting and racist.”
When two prominent Californians cite the under-representation of minorities in the legal profession as proof of discrimination and the failure of society, preprogrammed, Sturges-class deep thinkers nod sadly in approval. However, when an anonymous blogger notes the over-representation of minorities in a local riot (and, for the record, all other categories of street crime) and suggests that they themselves are to blame, those same thinkers get steaming mad and see only insults and racism.
Let’s reverse engineer your cognitive process: When mere arithmetic is used to arrive at a politically correct conclusion about an incredibly complex issue—one involving human motivation, ability, and values—as well as historical realities, your well-conditioned brain circuits hum in agreement. However, when an observable fact leads to a conclusion to which you are programmed to deny, you bark out the approved response and growl at the messenger.
Good boy. They’ve got you rolling over on cue. This state’s anointed victims can tear-up your town and make you feel guilty, all in the very same week.
Justice Moreno may not understand this, or maybe he’s just too politically indebted to admit it, but the overwhelming percentage of people practicing law in this state are doing so because of their talent and effort. Sure, some had the breaks inevitable in a free society, but many did not. There are thousands of lawyers in this state who made it entirely on their own, refusing to let hardship, handicap, or anyone’s expedient horseshit deny them access.
But you—you’re happy to wag your tail and take the blame for anything.
Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I guess there are worse things than being branded “insulting and racist.”
We all hollared about freedom of speech when Finfan’s blog was pulled by the SJI editors because it involved personal insults. Now Finfan is at it again and thankfully his comments were allowed to remain even though they are insulting and racist. It allows us to evaluate Finfan’s comments and put them in their proper place. Maybe Finfan needs to read a little California history so that he (she) can find out that California was a land of color a long time before it became a state. California both upper and lower were, heaven forbid, Mexican. Now we are an ethnic blend of many interesting cultures. I feel so fortunate to be alive in the middle of it.
I understand why the editors of this blog were trying to spare us this week. I wonder why you are so defensive about professionals practicing jurisprudence unless………..I will always be able to depend on your remarks to be as they are above. To a fair and equality minded person your remarks so far have no value.
I’ll repeat here what I proudly wrote in #18,“Now we are an ethnic blend of many interesting cultures. I feel so fortunate to be alive in the middle of it”.
I’m not ashamed of my ideas, my name is posted here for all to read. Where’s yours?
Local Blowhard Accuses San Jose Inside of Excluding Minorities!
San Jose—In a development that caught its founders off guard, the president of the Bay Internet Guerillas, a chapter of Bloggers Anonymous, today accused San Jose Inside, a popular blog dedicated to local issues, of denying access to its site to women and people of color.
“The data is conclusive,” alleged Frustrated Finfan, revealing his BIG-BA position publicly for the first time Friday. With his identity concealed by a cardboard box over his head, Finfan produced a stack of kindergarten-quality statistics that he claimed proved that minority bloggers are under-represented on the site. “See, that’s a five there!” he shouted. “With all the minorities we have around here it should be a, uh, bigger number. Much bigger!”
Although the news conference was generally orderly, things got tense when a heckler in the crowd demanded to know Finfan’s real name and accused him of being “insulting and racist.”
“You sound like a lawyer to me,” accused the male heckler, who was wearing an “I Love Diversity” half-shirt.
This prompted an angry, unprintable response from Finfan, who made it clear what he thought of lawyers.
Later, responding to reporters’ skepticism while taking questions, Finfan shouted defensively, “Look, don’t question my figures—I had Rick Callender help me with them.”
At that point, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury gasped, “Oh my, if Mr. Callender’s involved in this, I’ll need to call my editor. Were gonna need some space on page one.”
This is one of my favorite clips – from those racists at KRON4 no less!
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=2355202&nav=5D7lRMeO
The best line of the story:
“De La Fuente complained that the checkpoints were making life miserable for illegal immigrants who aren’t licensed to drive but otherwise obey the law.”
Like the ongoing evolution of the web (and life itself), innovation and the values inherent in human discourse (such that this blog has attempted to address) are eventually stymied by the compulsive egocentric static of the morons in our mist.
Say what you will, but there is no denying the plain truths in the first paragraph of the #14 post submitted by finfan.
Too many people wince at the truth but the numbers support finfan’s allegations. They’re not even allegations. They’re facts.
If it takes a style like finfan’s to wake people up, then so be it.
This town, and indeed the whole country, is on a slippery slope due to the lack of responsibility and self-accountability that has polluted the population, white, black, brown or otherwise. These festive trouble-makers are not entitled to wreak havoc on our downtown, but from the responses to finfan’s post, you’d think they were, since it’s a free country. There is no bigger responsibility than maintaining a free society, but these jokers don’t know the meaning of responsibility.
I’m not some ultra right-wing republican. Quite the opposite. But I know the type of behavior that shouldn’t be tolerated downtown, or anywhere else. If it takes cops in riot gear to get these useless thug types to raise their kind of hell somewhere else, so be it. I pay my taxes and these losers for the most part don’t. Chief Davis, go ahead and ride every last one of them out on a rail.
I finally realized why “Frustrated Finfan” has chosen his name. It is because he is always wrong. If I were as consistently wrong on any subject as finfan is consistently wrong I also would be frustrated.
Based on his constant racial rants one would think he is a social conservative. Of course, since rational, intelligent thought and social conservatism are incompatible, his rants do make sense, in a consistently wrong manner.
are you guys for real??
moving all nightclubs and entertainment venues to the fair grounds sounds crazy.
this idea sorta reminds me of this one street in tijuana where all the nightclubs and bars are on. lets picture in our headz “MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME” with a nightclub flare.
hey don’t forget the in house jail, kinda like the place in Great America where they take all the young lost kidz or shoplifters too.
jokes aside tho, i think by doing this we might be able to finally beat out san francisco as an entertainment hub for the bay area, who knows we might even get worldwide recognition for this so call nightclub funland.
OK, if you want to get rid of the thug element downtown, wouldn’t you want to examine the Santana Row phenomenon? If thugs don’t like it there, then offer something similar downtown. People get an attractive downtown venue for their dining, shopping and entertainment fixes, the thugs find a more hospitable environment for their lawless activities, everybody wins.
Hurry, before the county takes today’s entry seriously and puts a plan together. Then we’d have another lawsuit fiasco from asleep-at-the-switch SJ, etc. etc. with more tax dollars wasted!
Is it hallucinogens or simply the distressing state of modern education that would allow someone to write:
“…since rational, intelligent thought and social conservatism are incompatible…”?
If Tired (#26) really sees a complete disconnect between social conservatism and rational thought, he must believe it irrational to preserve any of the things—the customs, institutions, values—that bond us together as a society. Strange thought coming from someone who expressed his thoughts using correct grammar. Perhaps English grammar is an exception, just one on Tired’s select list of things worth conserving? Maybe he’s only slightly infected with social conservatism—only occasionally incompatible with rational, intelligent thought.
Or maybe not. Maybe he only thinks he’s thought things through. Perhaps he is much more of a social conservative than he ever imagined. In fact, I’ll bet on it. I’ll bet that he believes that fathers should support their children, that the public should be protected from violent predators, that people should treat each other with respect—just of few of the many things that no longer exist in America’s inner cities. And I suspect that Tired believes in a hell of a lot more.
Problem is, Tired thinks that his rules—his selectively applied social conservatism—are the right rules. How convenient. He can judge each case not with the same measure, but with the agenda driven, gutless measure of the moment. Tired, like so many of the stone throwers posting here, has a stamp for any thought or observation contrary to his own. My views have been stamped “Bigot.” I have been filed away under “Social Conservative.” No argument necessary. No contradictory proof offered. Just an ad hominen attack delivered in defense of an absolute commitment to nothing.
The satirical post that got things started here addressed the lawlessness and incivility that has become a serious nighttime problem downtown. The problem did not arise out of nothing; it emerged inevitably from an unkempt, unruly environment, one where the art of cultivation was ignored and weeds were declared to be flowers.
It turned out damned ugly.
Downtown San Jose: if only the law and civility had been “conserved.”
#24 Nice try.
“Morons in our mist”?
In just 4 words, you’ve epitomized the bay area on a foggy day. Well done.
Bartlett’s material? Maybe.
The perfect title for Michael Savage’s next book? Absolutely.