In the Spring of 1989, I traveled to China with San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos and a Bay Area delegation. It was smack in the middle of historic times. No, not our junket, but the student protests at that time filling up Tiananmen Square in Bejing. The air was full of the feel of historic events imminent. It was at that moment that another “epochal” event occurred: FLASH - San Jose passed San Francisco in population.
The large press contingent with us leaped like mad dogs to the attack. They rushed me with shouted questions and wild pumping arms, literally spitting the questions: it was frightening. The gist of them all being, “what does it all mean? Has San Jose finally arrived,” they wondered? My answer was simple, succinct and unsatisfying. I said it meant nothing. It changed nothing. That the worth of a city was not in the size of its population, the rhetoric of her Mayor, or anything like that. It involved the more basic elements of how people felt about living, working and raising their family in that place.
I bombed.
The press fled my presence like they had seen a waiter with a bill and rushed to seek a bevy of more colorful, mindless, and sophomoric responses, like John Burton’s “San Jose can’t carry our jock!” And get them they did.
Little has changed.
As we pass Detroit to hit the top ten, the same foolish debate takes place. We learned nothing; we forgot nothing.
Whether we are Number 10 or Number 2, is absolutely meaningless. The real worth and yes, “greatness” of a City – I avoided using that word for eight years preferring the more powerful one, “good” – is in the strength and confidence of those who live there.
Cynics can sneer at the Downtown, our bland neighborhoods, and the title, “Capital of Silicon Valley”, but they are very wrong. In San Jose, we prepared our industrial areas, protected our neighborhoods, and built our own museums. I love the fact that the top three attractions now are The Tech, the Children’s Discovery Museum, and Happy Hollow. It says a lot about our City and our citizens. What it says is all good and we should be proud, very proud. Number 10: nice, I guess, but really, who needs it when we have everything else.
It’s true that population doesn’t make the city but it’s people do, especially the leaders. Unfortunately, we can find a variety of things that represent the small town thinking prevelant in San Jose.
A new city hall that will end up being a white elephant, public transportation going backwards by cutting services to save money instead of trying to increase use, the mess at the airport (won’t say the name as that is another sore point) where the powers to be prefer to increase parking revenues instead of providing better public transport access, the comic fight between the county and city re the builing of a theater, and on and on!
Time to think about what can be done to improve our city instead of how to profit from it. We are never going to change how people regard San Francisco and San Jose. Down south it’s still LA and Orange County and it’s will be that way here for a long long time. So who cares? We have to overcome the small town thinking and do things right for a change.
This is, like it or not, the San Francisco Bay Area—not the San Jose Bay Area. You can try to split south and north bay all you want, but the rest of the world won’t listen, any more than San Diego or Orange County can deny the influence of Los Angeles around them.
South Bay leaders (and citizens) need to stop trying to “replace” San Francisco, and start thinking in terms of creating its own civic identity—competing head to head will fail. San Jose isn’t magically going to become the primary tourst spot or a huge conference city without bridge transplants, so we should move on.
Knott’s Berry Farm knows better than to advertise that folks should visit them instead….
Tom-
Good post!
There seems to be too much of a tendency here to define San Jose only by it’s urban core to the exclusion of everything else. While the ever-improving Downtown focal point is, and will always be, a work-in-progress, San Jose is the type of city that will always be defined by it’s neighborhoods and the people who live in them. However, when I do go downtown it’s clean, walkable, and unlike SF there is not an army of panhandlers.
Happy 4th One and All!
Ed.
San Jose wouldn’t have become the 10th largest city if people did not want to live here. Some of us may b… & moan about the need for a baseball team, a stubby downtown, no BART, etc but to 904K people, these things are not what made them come over and stay. It is what San Jose has now.
I’m a little disheartened by all of the “don’t b…& moan, BE HAPPY!” rhetoric regarding our city. In short, we could do so much better. True, we will never be San Francisco or Paris…cosmopolitan, retro, exciting urban. But we should strive to be as great as possible. As much as the naysayers hate to hear it, I would love to see a “gem”of a ballpark and MLB downtown…an exciting Diridon/Arena district! A confluence of regional rail, upscale retail and innovative housing (see Santana Row). It’s amazing what sports venues and succesfull downtowns/districts have done for cities across the country…just look to Camden Yards for Baltimore or Petco Park/Gaslamp for San Diego. Yes, San Jose is a great place to call home…I was born and raised here. But let’s not live with the mindset of a naysayer or non-risk taker…Let’s strive for greatness Mr. McEnery!! The 10th largest city in the U.S. deserves it!!
We do not need a MLB team, and for Ron G to grasp at straws like it will occur is really sad. How about supporting teams that we already have. The San Jose Giants and Earthquakes both need new stadiums. We will see these teams leave if we do not focus our attention to supporting them.
It is after all the San Francisco Bay Area and we should just be proud to live in it, and not become another San Francisco.