We have heard this story many times before. My friend sells downtown real estate and has lived in San Jose his entire life, so he is familiar with an area that many don’t visit much. He and his lady friend, who wanted to get a taste of what it would be like if she lived downtown, just toured the Axis, 88SJ and other high rise homes there. Then they decided to visit downtown San Jose on a Saturday night and go to dinner and a comedy show.
They were both really excited to do something different from their normal nights out in Santana Row, Los Gatos, and Campbell. They ate dinner at Gordon Biersch, sitting outside. My friend said, “It was a blast.” Then they walked over to the Improv and saw a hysterical show. He said, “I always have such a great time when I see a show there.” All in all, they had a great night and tons of fun.
But they were in for a rude awakening when they walked out of the Improv at midnight to find the peaceful evening they left when they walked in had now turned into chaos. My friend said he could tell that “everyone was out looking for trouble.” He described a scene of thugs and hooligans being arrested on street corners, people yelling and cat-calling at cars passing by, bumper-to-bumper cruising and bar-goers that weren’t inside the bars. His friend was not feeling too safe at that moment.
What was sad to him was that downtown has so much to offer but that he couldn’t see his parents or his sister and her husband coming downtown anytime on a weekend. Then he related it to selling the downtown condos. Who is going to plunk down real estate dollars if they aren’t prepared to answer the question: “Am I willing to be in downtown San Jose at night and on weekends?”
Why is recognizing the problems downtown such a huge issue? The city council wants to skirt over them as if there aren’t any. Why do they bow down to lobbyists who want to bring in more nightclubs instead of closing the troublemaking ones that are already here? Why do they put themselves on the defensive when people complain that the police are treating the thugs and hooligans unfairly? Why aren’t there stiffer penalties for cruising and disturbing the peace?
This reeks of political correctness and fear. How can we ever solve the problems downtown if we cannot get our city council to even acknowledge they exist?
Our Mayor and city council, aside from Nora Campos who has the guts to say otherwise, thinks that our police police department working with the same amount of officers as it had in 1994 is acceptable. They will never acknowledge there is a problem downtown, let alone the rest of the city. Maybe they can use some of the 2 million dollars worth of golf nets that were just purchased to drop out of the police helicopter on the thugs coming out of the nightclubs. Downtown during the day is beautiful; downtown at nighttime is a lost cause and our city council will never get that.
I’ve had many evenings exactly like that—dinner, Improv, drinks at E&O, or Vietnamese food, class at the West Coast Bartender school, then drinks at Tiki lounge.
The end of the evening always feels like one of those ‘Dusk to Dawn’ type vampire movies, though: “We have to get out of here before nightfall!”
3 years ago, when I was shopping for a condo, I almost bought a 1 bedroom at Paseo Plaza, between 3rd and 4th streets near the Rep. I mentioned this to a buddy and his comment was that weekend nights in downtown could get crazy. For some reason, I held off on the Paseo Plaza condo and ended up with a 3 bedroom in a complex just north of downtown near Basset Street. I’m really happy I bought there becase it’s close enough to walk to downtown restaurants like Gordon Biersch yet far enough out of the way so that I miss the chaos on the weekend. It’s also near light rail which is a big help these days. Your real estate buddy should keep this in mind-the best condos are close to downtown but not in the middle of the zoo.
I’ll keep saying it: invest in a new entertainment district to lure out these “troublesome” clubs instead of continuing to wage war on them. It’s going nowhere.
SG-“This reeks of political correctness and fear. How can we ever solve the problems downtown if we cannot get our city council to even acknowledge they exist?”
Good question. Some of the reasons we will never get this under control are that business owners are too busy trying to make a huge profit, and they’re always pointing fingers at the Police for the garbage they attract here. Even when violence occurs at their clubs or events, they don’t take responsibility for a dam thing.
The IPA is too busy collaborating with groups like the NAACP accusing the Police of racial profiling and discrimination. Decent people of color won’t go downtown. Several of my Latino friends wouldn’t even go to Cinco de Mayo this year because they knew there would be drinking, drugs, and fights. And they were right.
YEARS AGO THE EAST BAY CITIES ENFORCED PROSTITUTION LAWS AND DROVE THAT ACTIVITY TO DOWNTOWN SAN JOSE. FINALLY, AN AGRESSIVE CLEAN UP OCCURED AND THE PROBLEM WAS HANDLED.
TODAY, SAN JOSE’S DOWNTOWN AREA IS ONE OF THE FEW PLACES WHERE THE NEGATIVE ELEMENTS IN OUR LOCAL MARKET CAN EXIST. DOWNTOWN SAN JOSE IS FAST BECOMING THE “DUMPING GROUNDS” FOR NEGATIVE ACTIVITIES WHO CANNOT FIND ALTERNATE LOCATIONS.
WHY DO WE TOLERATE THIS UNPRODUCTIVE AND UNDESIRABLE ACTIVITY?
THE POST BY SG IS, SADLY, CORRECT.
When I lived downtown a number of years ago, there was also problems from college student (guess which one) antics: chair throwing, music blasting after midnight, and a home rental “trashing” also after midnight. Guess we should ban them too.
I think it is also fair to ask what the previous City leaders were thinking when they were so eager to get SJ on the map with a 24-Hour city as they so eagerly desired (maybe you can make a film and go to their home and ask them about these lingering crime problems). For that matter, is any City around here very safe after dark; there are parts of Boston, DC, LA, SF that are much much worse. Might just be the side benefits of making a 24-Hour city.
I was downtown last weekend taking a late walk (well, for us—9.00 pm) with my 9 year old before we took the 22 bus back up to the Rose Garden. It was the first time since kids entered my life I’d been downtown not during the day or a midweek night. I guess I’ve been parenting too long and I’m pretty out of it because I had *no idea* how to understand the courtship rituals of the young people cruising the streets. It just looked scuzzy to me but everybody seemed to be having a good time so maybe I just don’t get it.
But a bigger thought came to me, and it’s this: Market, demographic, and generational forces will always be stronger than government’s attempts to socially engineer urban behavior (thank goodness) so maybe we should just quit trying to force bourgeoise ‘niceness’ into downtown and let the market decide what/who wants to be there. It may be low-end and crummy to some people’s way of thinking, but there’s obviously alot of people who want something like that and, last I recall, they vote and pay taxes, too. The guys who built the high rise condos might not get the tenants they want is the risk they take in any free market environment.
It’s not written in the city charter that downtown has to be appropriate for everybody. At the end of thet day, it’s just another neighborhood in a big city. Why should it be seen as some sort of arbiter or signifier for our urban identity any more than Grand Century Mall or Santana Row or the Flea Market?
Downtown San Jose. Even when I was single and didn’t have a girlfriend I never like to go to downtown San Jose on weekends. I guess Im not the type of guy that likes to hang out with people that just try to spot which girl is drunk enough to let me molest them on the dance floor and get them completely wasted. San Jose is a great place to go if you want to get drinks and take a girl out. As long as youre willing to pay $100 tab for 5 shots, go to a club packed with 90% guys, almost get in 3 fights before the night is over because youre with a girl and the other 100 guys want her, have every other car that drives by scream and yell at your girl, go to a club with bouncers and club staff that will treat you like shit and not pay attention to anyone causing the problems in the bars. I rarely go to DT San Jose. I usually end up in downtown Mountain View. The crowd is less rowdy and its a safer place to take a girl. Sometimes my girlfriend likes to have “Girls Night Out” Im not a jealous person but I cant feel comfortable letting her go to San Jose DT on a weekend without me. Its a zoo down there. I always see a ton of cops but they arent really doing anything but lounging around grouped together talking to each other. Maybe if they were split up to patrol and walk a beat some of these problems would go away. Its nice to see that the hoods of 8 police cars are heavily guarded and secure, tax dollars at work.
When the Taste “nightclub” opened behind San Pedro Square, it brought the usual problems that we associate with these businesses to our neighborhood, just like those described by Single Gal in her column. Crowds of drunken young men, loud music and party noise until after 2am, brawls and worse, broken bottles and glass, vomit and urine everywhere, and constant parties in the car park across the street which got trashed every weekend. The Taste clientele chased off the customers for the restaurants and bars around the area and many of those businesses that had been here for years suffered. Things were so bad that the police stationed a “paddy wagon” outside Taste every weekend.
When Taste closed a few weeks ago, all of those problems virtually disappeared overnight. We had the same experience before when the Miami Beach Club moved out.
I can only draw one conclusion from these experiences.
I agree with #9 Daniel has to say. I just one to point out something Daniel brings up, and why the police are not going to solve the downtown problem. Daniel states, “I always see a ton of cops but they aren’t really doing anything but lounging around grouped together talking to each other. Maybe if they were split up to patrol and walk a beat some of these problems would go away. Its nice to see that the hoods of 8 police cars are heavily guarded and secure, tax dollars at work”. What Daniel says has a lot of validity. We can however, read many posts from those in support of the problem clubs, that the police are causing the problems by using “heavy handed” tactics and creating a police state. There seem to be 2 camps; those that think the police are doing nothing and those that think the police employ gestapo tactics. In my opinion, the police are doing a great job given the circumstances. They are not at the heart of this matter; it is past time that those who are responsible are held to task and quit hiding behind the shadow of blaming the police. It is cowardly and disgraceful.
But the really funny thing is why the developer wanted, and got, approval from the planning department, planning commission, and city council for the name “88” for the high-rise mentioned in the first pragraph by SG. See what the ADL says about “88.”
http://www.adl.org/hate_symbols/numbers_88.asp
Only departments, commissions, and councils with room-temperature IQs would approve the name “88.” But then who else would allow downtown San Jose to acquire a reputation far worse than that accorded to the East Side in the past?
I feel safer at any time day or night around King and Tully or Story, than I do at night downtown.
PS: Sometime I’ll fill you in on the real meaning of “Axis,” the other high-rise mentioned in SG’s first paragraph. It’s funny, too. Room-temperature IQs are nothing to fool with.
Tower 88 sounds like it fits in fine:
The eighth letter of the alphabet is “H.” Eight two times signifies “HH, ” shorthand for the Nazi greeting, “Heil Hitler.” 88 is often found on hate group flyers, in both the greetings and closing comments of letters written by neo-Nazis, and in e-mail addresses.
#12,
Leave it to the hate-filled scumbags at the ADL, an organization that will leave no stone unturned in its efforts to tell America who it’s okay to hate, to find hate in a simple, benign integer. Gee, I never realized that all those Americans cruising around in Olds 88’s were actually driving a hate-mobile. I wonder if 77 is also a hate number, given that it represents HH in the Greek alphabet? Is Hebrew off-limits for hate references, or should 55 also make us tremble in fear?
Tell me, Mr. Warner, does 88 divided by 2 equal 44 or a half-serving of hate? Maybe you should consult the experts?
Answer me this: did the ADL discover the evil in that number before or after it corrupted a SF police inspector into turning over files on law-abiding Americans so it could arm-twist and ruin its political opponents and supply Israel an up-to-date enemies list? And then there is its successful use of—what else?—political muscle and accusations of anti-Semitism against SF DA Arlo Smith to avoid prosecution in the case?
What number did the ADL assign the hate campaigns of slander and political ruin it waged against Pete McCloskey and Charles Percy and Paul Findley? Or the one it now wages against as decent a man as has ever served as our president, Jimmy Carter?
You want a number to hate? Try 10,000—that’s the number of American citizens whose privacy was violated after the ADL slimed its way into the classified files of twenty law enforcement and other agencies because it did not approve of the way those Americans practiced their free speech rights; in other words, because the ADL hated them.
WHOA! #14 FINFAN,
Did you take a viagra and get stood up?
D.O.A.
I go downtown almost every other weekend and have never run into the problems that any of you people have described. You are either hypersensitive (oh my god young people screaming they must be gang members!!) or the kind of stuck up chode who doesn’t even like to party in the first place. Lets hope BART to San Jose never gets built because it will be a direct line for the “thugs” from Oakland and the East bay to get into our city.
Anyhoo, back on topic…
I took Caltrain home from San Francisco on a Saturday in early June, arriving at Diridon at 11:35-ish at night. I walked downtown to catch the Santa Theresa light rail, and felt safer in San Francisco than in downtown SJ. The only people out seemed to be waiting in lines outside of nightclubs, and occasionally packs of drunken young adults* milling about.
It seemed like an utter joke for this city to have a downtown that’s one big frat house. Campbell, Cupertino, Santa Cruz, San Fran-they are all much more worthwhile to visit than our joke of a downtown.
*I’m 28, before anyone else accuses me of being a grumpy old woman.
#12 Dale: It could be worse. I graduated with The Class Of ‘69.
So if 88 means HH then what about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_Powers
regarding Axis???
So are the only people that San Jose wants to have live here from Argentina?
Whatever…..
Did McInery name all these places???
Turns out that The 360 (the SOFA tower) was a code name for the Hitlers Eagles Nest.
Who name these things anyway?????
On the brighter side, apparently the City is reviewing a Use Permit application (CP08-056) to allow off-sale of alcohol beverages in association with a new full service grocery store at the new “88” building. If the developer believes that this site can support a full grocery store, then maybe Downtown does have a future after all
.
I’ve spoken to several dowtown resturant workers who say S. Second is a zoo Thursday-Sunday nights. They all beef up security, and walk all the females to their cars after closing up.
a full service grocery store in The 88, just a block from the highly overpriced Zanotto’s, which has RDA subsidies???? If it stays open until 2:00 a.m., that’ll pretty much guarantee noisy liquor buyers as they leave the clubs.
I just spent the weekend in the Gas Light District in San Diego. It has bars and night clubs that are filled everynight with people. The place is fun. I am not a younger guy either, but my wife and I had a blast. We also live in Downtown San Jose, and I do agree. The place is a bit more rough. The Gas Lamp District in SD proves that you can have bars and areas to hangout and you don’t need the element that exists in SJ’s downtown. We should crack down on the thugs, not the bars. The two should not be linked. The Bars are fun places to hang, but the San Jose area is rough. Clean up the people. Leave the bars.