Here at San Jose Inside, we feel well compensated by all the comments we get, so we feel no need to vote ourselves a raise. I’m still bringing you the news in review at the same low price I was when we started this site. Although, since I think of this column as art, I was gratified to read Mark de la Vina’s article in the Mercury that arts funding may be increased. Art or not, here’s the rest of the news.
Not getting more funding will be the Mayor and City Council Members. As Janice Rombeck reports, they voted to reject raises at Tuesday’s meeting.
Tracey Kaplan and Aaron Davis report on all of the events that will be taking place in Santa Clara at next month’s eBay conference that was supposed to be a great boon for downtown. Affecting downtown in a totally different way, there’s a new proposal for Coyote valley, as Rodney Foo details.
In a victory for preservationists, Centex Homes will preserve cannery buildings and turn them into condos, instead of demolishing them, the Mercury reports.
Remember, there’s an election soon in district 7. In Metro, The Fly covers some recent developments. In the Mercury, Rodney Foo describes a recent candidate forum.
I’ll close by echoing Gary Singh‘s question, why doesn’t San Jose have a great independent bookstore like the just turned 50 Kepler’s? Share your thoughts here, or try to find me in the stacks with my coffee…
You should think about eliminating this as a weekly column. It sucks and if people were going to read the news – they would.
Have something to say – Oh, I forgot – you’re a consultant. Your not supposed to really do or say anything!
Keep up the good work
I disagree. I read the newspaper everyday, but sometimes miss relevant articles.
I would actually ask that you expand the service to include more articles of substance.
Thanks.
To own a great bookstore located on a prime corner in 20th century downtown San Jose; I recall having such a dream one night. I remember . . .
back before the war, the Great Depression. Not so great.
After the war things got a bit better. I sold a few romance novels to the secretaries during noontime, and in the late afternoon some fiction to the blue-collar guys from FMC. I remember how the cannery workers with their well-behaved kids would sometimes fill the downtown, crowding the bargain stores and lunch counters, walking past my bookstore without even noticing it.
You know, I thought the sixties was going to save the store. San Jose was on the move, running neck and neck with Phoenix in the fastest growing race. The engineers were arriving, technology was going to be the valley’s ticket. There were men with big ideas, but, sadly, I watched as one of those ideas killed the downtown almost overnight.
The empty streets and vacant buildings attracted society’s dregs—the nuts, drunks, addicts, and whores. In the seventies, most of the people who came through my front door came to steal, seek shelter from the rain, or hide from the cops. The college had become a university, but it seemed as if every frat house had been turned over to Lambda Omega Lithium.
Whose idea was it to turn the campus area into a board-and-care district?
The eighties saw my shop finally discovered by San Jose’s intellectual community. He came into the store every other Friday, rain or shine.
As for the nineties I remember only this question over and over, pounding and pounding in my head:
“Donde queda en la biblioteca?”
I woke-up in a fever sweat, screaming, “No, dammit. No!”
What a brutal nightmare!
I like because I don’t read all these papers. Your doing me a favor. Keep up the good work, Kevin.
Though I like the Thursday feature, I think that it needs to be expanded. Don’t just focus on the print media, check out San Jose weblogs. People are writing, just not necessarily posting on San Jose Inside.