A 61-year old furniture store at 82 E. Santa Clara was recently purchased by KSP Holdings with plans to transform it into a fitness club. Hank Coca's Downtown Furniture has been a Downtown staple for as long as I can remember. However, the writing has been on the wall that its days are numbered--literally, it has been having a "liquidation sale" for countless years.
KSP Holdings owns ClubSport fitness clubs, The Studio workout clubs, and Renaissance ClubSport hotels. It is not clear exactly which of those brands will hang on this 120 year old, 43,210 SQFT building. The only thing know for certain is that change is coming and this key Downtown corner is going to get a significant makeover.
Where: 3Below Theaters & Lounge, 288 So. Second Street, San Jose, CA 95113
Why: Every Sunday young and old alike can enjoy the company of others who appreciate this high art…the art of slapstick comedy. With origins dating all the way back to Ancient Greece and Rome, the slapstick genre has charmed audiences throughout time: commedia dell’arte, Punch and Judy, Amercian and English vaudeville. Across time and geography, audiences have been treated to these hilarious actors performing acrobatics and intentionally harming themselves, all in the name of laughs. Thankfully, the physical blows were not damaging; the comedians you’ll see in our Slapstick Sunday celebrations are most definitely masters of timing and comedic illusion.
Tickets: $10.00 (Discounts available for Students, Seniors, Military and Educators) Online at www.3Belowtheaters.com or 408.404.7711
Double Feature: See two movies on one day and take 25% off ($12 to $15)
Schedule: The same film(s) will be shown on the 1st and 3rd Sundays with another pair on the 2nd and 4th Sundays. Showing times are 11:00am and 12:45pm.
Sunday, July 1 & 14 at 11am: City Lights with Charlie Chaplin Sunday, July 1 & 14 at 12:45pm: Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin Sunday, July 8 & 22 at 11:00am: The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis Sunday, July 8 & 22 at 12:45pm: The Caddy with Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin Sunday, July 29 & August 12 at 11:00am: Buster Keaton in The General (+ a series of Keaton shorts) Sunday, August 5 & 19 at 10:30am: The Cocoanuts with The Marx Brothers Sunday, August 5 & 19 at 12:15pm: Animal Crackers with The Marx Brothers Sunday, August 26 & Sept 9 at 11:00am: Laughing 20’s with Laurel & Hardy Sunday, September 2 & 16 at 11:00am: Horse Feathers with The Marx Brothers Sunday, September 2 & 16 at 12:30pm: Duck Soup with The Marx Brothers
Photos courtesy of 3Below: Charlie Chaplin in City Lights and The Marx Brothers in The Cocoanuts
Tonight, join the Rotary Club of San Jose at Discovery Meadow for a free fireworks show. While it can be seen from most of Downtown San Jose, the best viewing spots will be close to the Children's Discovery Museum. The family-friendly event kicks off around 9:30pm. For more info and a list of sponsors head over here.
San Jose has been planning to utilize street lights for a next generation wireless grid for quite some time. Now, those plans are taking some concrete steps towards action.
Verizon, AT&T, and Mobilitie are laying out the groundwork for improved 4G LTE and new 5G internet infrastructure with the largest small cell deployment of any city in the United States. About 4,000 new cell stations will be added to light poles throughout San Jose.
Collectively the three companies will also contribute $24 million to San Jose's Digital Inclusion fund, which was designed to close the digital divide and help low income families acquire fast and reliable internet access.
The initiative is great news. If we are going to maintain our lead as the innovation capital of the world, our infrastructure has to keep up.
We are now at an all-time high when it comes to the state of the economy. Business Insider once again ranked San Jose as the #1 metro in the US when it comes to economic performance (GDP growth was an astounding 6.9%). In the first half of 2018, San Jose companies received about $400 million in venture funding through 14 different deals. Oh, and our unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 2.4%. The only other time we were ever in that zone was during the .Com shenanigans of 1999-2000. In fact, we have added over 70,000 jobs in the past 8 years, which more than makes up for the 35,000 jobs lost during the Great Recession.
Yes, it is very expensive to live here and traffic is horrible. However, the root cause of these two issues is a positive thing--our economy is at its pinnacle.
The Hello Kitty Cafe Truck has periodically been roaming the Bay Area, but now there is a permanent home for fans of Hello Kitty-shaped treats. The first Hello Kitty Mini-cafe in Northern California opened last week at Santana Row. Food items include cookies, pastries, lemonades, and teas. The store also sells merchandise such as shirts and mugs.
Who could resist a cat-shaped macaroon?
Source: Alt 105.3, hat tip to Arnold Kwok for sending this in!
Animaker is the first exhibit in the world that teaches kids about AI while actually teaching machines how to recognize objects in the real world. Visitors are invited to form animals out of lego blocks, which are then analyzed by a 3D scanner in conjunction with AI software and virtually placed in a jungle temple that is projected onto a wall. There is a two minute video below that shows how it works and it is quite an impressive concept.
Animaker is now open and will be at The Tech for at least a year. For more info, head over here.
New exhibit explores the future of creative play in an Artificial Intelligence driven world Animaker invites visitors to collaborate with AI-powered robots and bring their creations to life
May 31, 2018, San Jose, CA-- The Tech Museum of Innovation is opening a new immersive exhibit which invites visitors to collaborate with AI-powered robots to bring their creations to life. In Animaker, visitors step into a large-scale projection of a jungle temple where robots invite them to form animals out of LEGO/Duplo bricks. Their creations are analyzed by the robots, incorporating cutting edge 3D-scanning technology and an AI powered search engine that understands 3D content. The animals then come to life in a virtual ancient temple, and can be personalized by changing their look and behavior. This is the first experience in the world where children play and learn about AI by training machines to recognize different interpretations of real world objects.
Bringing together primitive and futuristic creative expression practices from cave art, graffiti, video games, LEGO and digital art, the installation breaks down barriers between the physical and the virtual world and enables completely new play experiences. Animaker incorporates cutting-edge cross reality (XR) developments while avoiding the genre-typical technological barriers such as headsets or AR-enabled mobile devices.
Animaker is developed by a global team of educators, engineers, and artists from The Tech Museum of Innovation (San Jose, Ca), AI technology startup Resonai (Tel Aviv/Palo Alto), digital art studio OMAi (Vienna, Austria) and 3D scanning startup Occipital (San Francisco, Ca).
“Animaker allows visitors to experiment with new forms of human machine interaction that are enabled by artificial intelligence, and extend one of the most beloved play experiences, LEGO building, into the virtual space,” says Galia Rosen Schwarz, VP business development at Resonai. “Our visual search engine, that understands 3D geometry and structure, analyzes each build and recognizes the animal that it represents. One of the key challenges here was teaching a computer to recognize builds that even the human eye may misinterpret.”
“It is thrilling to watch children so creatively engaged in a learning activity that so seamlessly combines the physical and virtual world. When educators, artists and tech makers come together, the possibilities for inspiring the next generation of innovative leaders are endless. We see the power of this creative confidence and knowledge of how to use new tech to solve problems last far beyond our exhibition walls,” says Nadav Hochman, experience developer and program manager, Art & Technology, at The Tech. Animaker is a collaboration The Tech is facilitating as part of a new Art + Tech initiative. The goal is to build a bridge between the global creative community and the high-tech sector of the greater Silicon Valley to create new experiences with emerging technology.
About the Animaker collaborators:
Resonai powers machines to understand the world through super-human visual perception, allowing them to recognize objects, complex scenes and context. Resonai’s search engine, that analyzes the precise geometry and structure of 3D content, powers real time visual search and recognition. For more information visit www.resonai.com.
Vienna based art studio OMAi create visual experiences around the world. Their iPad app Tagtool, a live instrument for spontaneous digital creation, has sparked a global community of artists and educators and was featured in Apple’s WWDC keynote videos twice. For more information visit www.omai.at
Occipital makes the Structure Sensor & SDK, Skanect, Canvas, TapMeasure, 360 Panorama and the PX-80 by Paracosm. Occipital focuses on making advanced computer vision technologies simple enough for everyday use. Occipital is based in Boulder, CO, San Francisco, CA and Gainesville, FL. For more information, visit Occipital on the Web at http://occipital.com and http://structure.io.
The Tech Museum of Innovation is a hands-on technology and science museum for people of all ages and backgrounds. The museum — located in the Capital of Silicon Valley — is a non-profit experiential learning resource established to engage people in exploring and experiencing applied technologies affecting their lives. The Tech’s mission is to inspire the innovator in everyone. thetech.org
At the SubZERO Festival last weekend, I stopped by a booth promoting this year's Sacred Art event. This is an annual immersive art and music show that is free to attend, but requires registration. This year's event will be at Forager, and the theme for Illuminate will focus on technology, spirituality, and the South African food crisis. Eat, drink, and enjoy the designs and installations!
Here's a video from the previous event to give you an idea of what to expect:
The event will be on Saturday, June 30 at 7pm, and will go until 1am the next day. The location is Forager. You can register for tickets here and learn more about the event here.
