Petition for Police to Enforce St. James Park Rules and Ordinances

A group of Downtown residents are fed up with the "quality-of-life" issues that are happening in St. James Park and have created a petition to SJPD Police Chief Larry Esquivel to actively enforce the park's rules and ordinances. It will take 2 minutes to sign the petition, but may have a lasting impact on improving the safety of this historic park. More info and link below:

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Greetings all,

 

Daily we see what goes on in St. James Park. We are all aware of the homeless feedings, sleeping, littering, pan-handling, drinking, drug usage and dealing, violence, etc. We are also aware that the police are not actively enforcing the existing park rules and ordinances that prohibit this activity. This situation makes our park unsafe and unattractive for the family-friendly events, activities, and programs we want to see.

 

We want this to change. Toward this end, Jill and I have used https://www.causes.com to create a petition that will be sent to the SJPD Police Chief, Larry Esquivel, to direct his officers to actively enforce the park's rules and ordinances. 

 

Please join with us in signing this petition by going to: https://www.causes.com/campaigns/34380-make-st-james-park-safer-by-enforcing-existing-laws-and-ordinances?utm_campaign=search_widget and signing up with either your Facebook or email address and then adding your name to the petition. Once you sign, please ask your friends and neighbors to also sign. 

 

St. James Park is both a neighborhood and city park. Its historical position within the city justifies that it should be a destination for those who live, work, and play downtown. With your help and support, we can make this happen.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jack Sardegna

EV Week 2013 Kicks Off Today!

Electric vehicles are getting more mainstream everyday, and Silicon Valley is leading the charge (pun intended). Come check out the launch of EV Week 2013 today at Santana Row's Chess Plaza! All of the details are below. Also, don't forget to swing by Tesla's flagship US store while you're there. 

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San Jose Drivers Invited to Get Behind the Wheel of an Electric Vehicle  

San Jose, CA – Charge Across Town (www.chargeacrosstown.com) is driving forward the adoption of electric vehicles in the Bay Area with “EV Week 2013: San Francisco to Silicon Valley” – a three-city, five-day series of events and activities designed to engage, educate and excite Bay Area drivers about the benefits, ease and accessibility of driving all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Driving towards California Governor Jerry Brown’s goal of getting 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on California’s roadways by 2025, EV Week 2013 is inviting Bay Area drivers – from commuters to car sharers – to get behind the wheel of an EV and become part of the solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by driving greener, cleaner vehicles.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, San Jose City Councilmembersand Bay Area electric vehicle, technology, civic and environmental leaders, will kick-off EV Week 2013 with a launch event at Santana Row Chess Plaza, featuring free EV test drives around Chess Plaza and an Electric Vehicle Exposition showcasing the largest selection of new plug-in and all-electric vehicles, EV charging technologies, mobile applications, and car and scooter-sharing services.  

What

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed launches EV Week 2013 in San Jose

When

Thursday, September 26.  San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and San Jose City Councilmembers will speak from 12pm to 12:30pm.

Where

San Jose’s Santana Row Chess Plaza

Santana Row between Olin Avenue & Olsen Drive

More at:  www.chargeacrosstown.com/ev-week-silicon-valley

Interview, Photo & Video Opportunities:

Thursday, September 26 – San Jose’s Santana Row Chess Plaza

Santana Row between Olin Avenue & Olsen Drive

12pm – 12:30pm – Launch event featuring San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and San Jose City Councilmembers, together with Bay Area electric vehicle, technology, civic and environmental leaders

12pm – 7pm – San Jose drivers enjoy free Electric Vehicle Ride & Drives around Santana Row Chess Plaza.

12pm – 7pm – Electric Vehicle EXPO at Santana Row’s Chess Plaza featuring:

The largest selection of state-of-the art plug-in and all-electric vehicles, including the new BMW i3, Ford Fusion Energi, Ford Focus, Ford C-Max Energi, Toyota Plug-in Prius and RAV 4 EV, Honda Fit, Honda Accord, Mitusbishi MiEV and Nissan Leaf.

Demos of the first-ever ALL electric scooter and one of the nation’s first mobile solar charging stations.

Interactive exhibits from: Tesla, Honda, Toyota, Ford, Nissan, PG&E, Schneider-Electric,Pandora, Zipcar, City CarShare, Scoot Networks, Chargepoint, DriveNow, Envision Solar, SAP, SunPower and the Center for Sustainable Energy California (CCSE).

Friday, September 27 – San Jose – Santana Row Chess Plaza

12pm – 7pm – San Jose drivers enjoy free Electric Vehicle Ride & Drives around Santana Row Chess Plaza.

12pm – 4pm – Electric Vehicle EXPO at Santana Row’s Chess Plaza.

O'Flaherty's is Celebrating Guinness Day

O'Flaherty's is having a huge event this Saturday to celebrate the man responsible for my favorite mainstream brew. They'll have live music all day along with a $1,000 contest for the best Guinness Irish Stew. More info below:

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Come out September 28th celebrate Sir Arthur Guinness day at O'Flaherty's Irish Pub. There will be live music all day featuring The Shams & The Wild Rovers. Also, we will be giving out a $1,000 prize to the person who can make the best Guinness Irish Stew! To register for the competition simply email oflahertysirishpub@yahoo.com with your name and phone number. 

CREAM Ice Cream Shop Coming to Post St.

Another hot eatery is coming to Downtown San Jose! C.R.E.A.M. (Cookies Rule Everything Around Me) is a chain that specializes in customizable ice cream sandwiches and tacos, as well as milkshakes. They will be opening up shop at the corner of South First and Post, adjacent to 55 South and across from Original Gravity House. Things are really starting to turn around along this corridor.

Side-note, I have added DTSJNews to the blogroll on the right. Great site, I just found out about it!

Source: DTSJNews, Drew S., Joseph M.

Silicon Valley Roots & Shoots

I just learned about a great app called Silicon Valley Roots & Shoots. It's an insider's guide to Silicon Valley and lets you create your own Silicon Valley tour focused around the people and places that made this region the tech epicenter it is today. The app was created by David A. Laws, a 40-year veteran o Silicon Valley that has worked his way up from being a junior engineer to an executive at semiconductor companies such as Fairchild, AMD, and Altera. Currently he is a consultant and semiconductor curator at the Computer History Museum.

Some of the key attractions featured in the app are the birthplaces of:

• Computer Chips
• Video Games
• Disk Drives
• Video Recorders
• Ethernet
• Apple
• Facebook
• Google
• HP

It also has a comprehensive list of local landmarks, museums, companies, educational institutions and restaurants that comprise the historical fabric of Silicon Valley. I even found a few places that I had no idea existed. Everything is very well organized and the app makes it easy to hit up multiple places in a single area or city.

The Silicon Valley Roots & Shoots app is available for both Android and iOS, and only costs $2-3. You can find more information about it over here.

American food culture photo shoot at Montalvo on 9/29

Love food? Community? Unique events? 

Be a part of a national photography project called My American Pantry on Saturday, September 29th at Montalvo Arts Center. Register (link at the end of this post), bring a picnic blanket and some goodies to share! Culinary artist, Andrea Blum, will position all participants in the composition she wants for the photo and a drone will fly above and capture the view! "The resulting photo will be included in an interactive digital atlas of American food and drink representing American food and entrepreneurship." 

See this as an example, taken in Marin County. Read the official release below for more information.

Photo © Kenny Blum Photography and Andrea Blum, 2013.

Official Press Release:

CALLING ALL FARMERS, GOURMET ARTISANS, AND FOOD & DRINK LOVERS: BE A PART OF THE AMERICAN PANTRY MAP!

     

National photographic project by artist Andrea Blum celebrates American food culture with photo shoot at Montalvo on Sept. 29 at 1:30pm 

SARATOGA, Calif. – At 1:30pm on September 29, 2013, culinary artist Andrea Blum invites the community to participate in her national photography project My American Pantry: a celebration of creativity, taste, community, and entrepreneurship. Taking place on the Great Lawn of the Montalvo Arts Center, the event will begin with an aerial photo shoot, followed by a community picnic with participants sharing dishes prepared from family recipes. The resulting photo will be included in an interactive digital atlas of American food and drink representing American food and entrepreneurship.
 

This will be the first time Blum has invited the general public to participate in one of her MAP photo shoots In the past, she has limited participants to professional artisan food and drink producers, including cheese makers, vintners, and farmers. “Part of the aim of my project is to celebrate the rich local traditions around the preparation and sharing of food,” she said. “Asking participants to share family recipes seemed like the natural evolution of the project.”

All participants will be asked to bring a picnic blanket of a specific color, a homemade food to share, and the recipe for the dish. Participants who are professional artisan producers will also be asked to bring products and tools of the trade of their craft. “Be prepared to relax in the grass and to share what you bring with those around you,” said Blum. “We will do the rest with the composition and with the remote control camera flying above.”


ABOUT MY AMERICAN PANTRY
Begun in 2013, the My American Pantry (MAP) project is an interactive tapestry of people, food, story, and recipes that celebrate the American table, conceived of by culinary artist Andrea Blum. Traveling around the country, Blum documents the wide array of artisans, products, and food traditions native to different geographic areas. First arranging participants and the tools of their trade in a carefully designed composition, Blum then captures the image via aerial photography by means of a remote-controlled camera. The photo shoots also provide an opportunity to gather stories from participants about their practices, products, and their craft.

The end-goal is to create an online and offline map of people, products, and stories allowing viewers and even shoppers to interact with the images and stories. Blum hopes to bring the finalized project from all 50 states to the World's Fair in Milan in 2015. More information about the MAP project is available at myamericanpantry.com.

ABOUT THE FOUNDER: ANDREA BLUM
Born in Pennsylvania and raised in California, Andrea Blum is a journalist and chef turned entrepreneur. Her passion for food ignited as a child after eating her first French meal in a famous restaurant in Philadelphia at 11 years old. That experience changed the way she thought about food. At 20 years old, she took a year to study in France learning the history, art, and cultural significance of food that would quickly become part of a lifelong fascination. Though she later returned to France and Italy to resume her studies of fresco painting and art restoration, every moment of her free time was spent exploring the cooking, farming, and culture of the French and Italian food world, with mothers, grandmothers, master cheese makers, and artisans.

In 2003, Blum traded her paintbrush for pen, graduating from Columbia University in Journalism with awards in social justice reporting. She has since worked as a reporter covering the environment in Northern California. But she has also stayed close to her passion for food, writing for newspapers and magazines such Gourmet and Saveur, and hosting tours to discover and indulge in Italian regional "food worlds" such as the Cilento and Amalfi Coast regions of Campania.

Blum’s interests have always been related to the geography of food; she seeks to discover the stories each dish can tell whether it’s from the highlands of Tibet or in remote villages in Turkey. My American Pantry (MAP) is an extension of her geographic quest to follow food back to where it’s made. Only this time, she has chosen to focus on American artisan food, its rebirth, its crafters and its terroir.

FLOURISH: ARTISTS EXPLORE WELLBEING
Blum's photo shoot is presented as part of the public programming organized around Flourish: Artists Explore Wellbeing, Montalvo’s latest multiyear programming theme, coordinated by the Lucas Artists Residency Program in collaboration with Montalvo’s Education Department. Through exhibitions, conversations, performances, and workshops, Montalvo explores the question, “How can we live meaningful, happy, and healthy lives?” For more information, please visit montalvoarts.org/flourish.

MY AMERICAN PANTRY (MAP) PICNIC AND PHOTO SHOOT
Who: Culinary artist Andrea Blum, in partnership with the Montalvo Arts Center
What: A public potluck picnic and photo shoot, organized around the My American Pantry project to celebrate American food and drink.
Where: Great Lawn of the Montalvo Arts Center, 15400 Montalvo Road, Saratoga, CA.
When: Sunday, September 29, at 1:30pm
Admission: It is free to participate, but advance registration is required. Please sign up at myamericanpantry.com/montalvo-picnic-photo.
  

Renders of KT Properties' Proposed Towers in San Pedro Square!

Below are images for the two towers that KT Properties is planning to build across the street from the San Pedro Square Market. In fact, you can even see the Market in the first three renders. The project will total 612 apartment units between both towers. One of them will be 20 stories (210 feet tall) and the other will be 22 stories (228 feet tall). In between the towers is an amenity courtyard with a pool, garden, and bocce ball court.

I love the design. I think it looks really sleek and pushes the design bar further for future high-rises. While the buildings use a similar design language, the towers themselves are different. Hopefully this will put an end to all of the identical-looking "sibling" buildings Downtown.

Oh, and did I mention it will include 13,000 SQFT of retail? This is a huge win for Downtown!

Source: SVBJ

San Jose Taiko Presents its 40th Anniversary Concert at the Center for Performing Arts in San Jose on October 5

 

San José, CA --- San Jose Taiko (SJT) is presenting its 40^th Anniversary Concert on October 5 at 8 PM at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts. This is a one-night-only performance, which will culminate SJT’s 40^th season with favorite pieces that audiences have grown to love over the group’s four decades in San Jose.  This year’s annual concert will feature guest artists Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose.

 

“We are grateful to those who came before us,” said Franco Imperial, Artistic Director of San Jose Taiko. “This concert is our chance to celebrate their accomplishments and what this community has helped us create over our 40-year history.  Our collaboration with Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose is an example of this.  The relationship with this incredible Bharatanatyam group started in 1992 and has been rekindled in the past few years through our collaboration in the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. Working with Abhinaya inspires us in so many ways. We love sharing the stage with each other and are grateful for their involvement in our 40th anniversary celebration ”

 

SJT has endeavored to create a contemporary musical style unlike any other taiko group in the world since its formation in 1973.  This artistic philosophy has allowed the company to push the boundaries of the art form while staying true to its roots.  This year’s concert will also feature the debut of SJT's new O-hiradaiko, a drum more than five feet in diameter and the largest taiko of its style in North America.

 

“We have such a talented group of performing members who are exemplary ambassadors for the art form and our Japantown community,” adds Wisa Uemura, Executive Director of San Jose Taiko. “We know where we come from, and we are San Jose proud. For 40 years, we have carried the name of this great city to all parts of the world, representing the creativity and innovation that is synonymous with Silicon Valley. Through this concert, we hope to offer our audiences a multicultural performance that will be remembered for the next 40 years.”

  

Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for students and seniors if purchased in advance ($30/$25 at the door).  All seats are reserved, and group rates are available. Ticket information is available by visiting www.taiko.org or by calling 408-293-9344 or writing info@taiko.org

The Center for Performing Arts is located at 255 Almaden Blvd, in downtown San Jose, CA.

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About San Jose Taiko:

 

San Jose Taiko, with a deep respect of cultural traditions and a commitment to artistic excellence, is dedicated to the advancement of the taiko art form through the development of its world-class Performing Ensemble and the San Jose Taiko Conservatory. Located in the heart of Japantown San Jose, the company performs more than 160 times annually, throughout the Bay Area, the United States, and abroad.

 

From its beginnings in 1973, SJT endeavored to create a contemporary musical style while respecting taiko’s Japanese roots.  Representative of the backgrounds and influences of its membership, SJT’s style joins the traditional rhythms of Japan with other world rhythms, including African, Brazilian, Filipino, Latin, and jazz. All of SJT’s performances are fully choreographed, theatrically lit extravaganzas, bridging many styles while still resonating with the Asian soul in America.

 

Enrich the human spirit. Connect people beyond cultural and demographic boundaries.

San Jose Taiko, 565 North 5^th Street, San Jose, CA 95112 408 293 9344 www.taiko.org