Sonoma Plays the San Jose Card

There are three things that Californians hold most dear above all else in life: their undying devotion to their individual automobiles, their more recent, but just as devoted, relationship with their iPhones and their fervent belief that representative democracy means that every election cycle we must wade our way through dozens and dozens of state and local ballot initiatives or propositions.

As a registered voter in California in the twenty-first century, you are mailed so many pamphlets and voting guides for each election that engaging in what was once the simple civil act of voting now resembles cramming for the S.A.T.

The statewide initiative process in California is outlined and protected in the state constitution.  The initiative process itself in California was a reaction to the corruption and power wielded by the railroads in the state at the beginning of the last century.

Proposition 13, which capped property taxes and was passed in 1978, was the most important and far-reaching ballot initiative during my lifetime, and its success set off a wave of city, county and state ballot initiatives that seem to grow exponentially in number and complexity each election.  If an elected official wants to commit political suicide in California, all one has to do is muse about the mere thought of revising Prop. 13.

I haven't run across many people in the Bay Area who, like myself, have lived in Sonoma County during the past twenty years and notice more than a passing resemblance to rural, agricultural San Jose in the 1970's.  I didn't know anyone else in Sonoma County who had once lived in San Jose and I've yet to encounter anyone in San Jose who has even visited Sonoma County.  They're two places only a hundred miles apart, but they might as well exist in different countries.

A verdant valley with dozens of farms, wineries and open stretches of untouched landscape accompanied by a dry, Mediterranean climate and surrounded by beautiful mountains, San Jose was at a crossroads in the 1970's and chose high tech jobs, unplanned suburban sprawl and growth over preservation of any kind.  It is now, without question, the Los Angeles of the Bay Area.

An affluent city of nearly a million people that sprawls unchecked across the entire floor of the Santa Clara Valley, there isn't a notable cultural attraction - a fine museum, gallery, world-class symphony, ballet or theatre company or a notable restaurant within the city limits.  The majority of the voters in San Jose have never considered any of that important. 

The new billion dollar terminal at San Jose Airport.

The expensive rinky-dink airport, which must be one of the major civic job generators in the county because the thing has been under construction the entire two years I've lived here, only has two international flights - both to Mexico - and two daily flight to the East Coast - one to Boston and one to New York.  San Jose thinks small on a big city scale.

Since we returned to San Jose two years ago, I can't recall a conversation with someone here that even remotely touched on food, a restaurant, a play, a museum or a book.  If it doesn't have a .com at the end, it might as well not exist.  In Sonoma County, it was damn near impossible to walk out to the mail box and not have someone mention their latest meal out or what gourmet goodies were fresh that week at the market.

Sonoma County was far more rural and agricultural than San Jose in the 1970's, and it also had a more extensive wine and tourist industry, and soon would have a far greater appreciation for good, fresh food and fine dining.  But unlike San Jose, Sonoma has also always had an arty, funky and politically active side.   There's a reason Tom Waits lives in Sonoma County, not San Jose.

A flyer announcing another protest.

Let me give a simple example.  Large protests in the small Sonoma County town of Occidental each summer, calling attention to and protesting the presence of the world's power brokers at the Bohemian Grove, are as much an annual rite of Summer as swimming in the Russian River.

You move the Bohemian Grove down to the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains near San Jose, and nobody cares and nobody has ever heard of it.  I'm sure any longtime residents of San Jose reading this are thinking to themselves, "Bohemian Grove?  What in the hell is Bohemian Grove?"

As the inevitable growth of the Bay Area moved north towards Sonoma in the 1970's and 1980's, residents looked to what was happening on the other side of the Bay in San Jose and nearly unanimously agreed they didn't want Sonoma County to become THAT.

A greenbelt movement was born to buy farms and lease them back to farmers, use zoning regulations to try and keep the agricultural areas green and restrict building and growth to the cities.  If you drive north on Highway 101 from San Francisco through Marin and Sonoma Counties, you will notice that there are miles and miles of open space between towns and cities.  The North Bay - despite seeing huge growth in population in the past twenty years - has still retained its unique agricultural and rural feel while moving into the twenty-first century.

The only greenbelt in San Jose would be Interstate 280, which connects the bedroom communities of San Jose with the high paying dot-com and high tech jobs in nearby Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

Sebastopol, California - a Nuclear Free Zone.

Throughout much of the 1990's and up to today, many of the more prominent local countywide ballot initiatives  in Sonoma County dealt with growth and how it should be handled.  Should the freeway be widened from four lanes to six?  No, maybe and eventually yes.  Should Sonoma County have a commuter railroad?  No, maybe, Yes.  Should there be some limits on building on hillsides that surrounded the valley?  Yes.  Should a housing development be permitted in a large, open space that had been the site of a devastating brush fire twenty years earlier?  Yes, it was.  Should a shopping mall be permitted atop a rebuilt hill that suffered a massive mudslide twenty years earlier?  Yes, it could and the hill's still moving.  Should you be able to enter Sebastopol - the scenic and charming town that anchors the West County of Sonoma - with a nuclear warhead?  Build your own reactor?  Sorry, you can't do that.  The voters have spoken.

As growth continued and ballot initiatives were used more and more in Sonoma County to curb and contain growth, one tactic became the final card played in every election that featured a growth or anti-growth proposition: if we do or don't pass this proposition, we will head down the road to becoming San Jose.  Not San Francisco, not Los Angeles, Stockton or Oakland.  San Jose.  The worst possible outcome for most residents of Sonoma County is that one day it will resemble San Jose.  That was the Ace in the Hole.  It was the winning hand every time.  No card-carrying Sonoman wanted Sonoma County to bear any resemblance to Santa Clara County, and especially not San Jose.  Forty years ago they were similar; today they are nothing alike.

I take the right and responsibility to vote seriously, and usually make it a point to study the issues and vote wisely in each election, but the growing ballot initiative industry in California is making that difficult.  There are elections now when the propositions are so convoluted, or the arguments are so convincing from both sides, that as a voter you just are not sure whom to trust.

The vast majority of state government spending in California has been set by voter mandates from piecemeal ballot initiatives, leaving the governor or legislature little room to make discretionary budget decisions.  So much is approved one proposition at a time that the voters approve money for schools and hospitals in one election, jails and highways in the next election and then parks and police and fire protection in the next election.  They are all important and worthy budget expenditures, but they shouldn't be decided one issue at a time from year to year.  They need to be decided as a whole on an annual basis.  That's why we elect a governor and a legislature.

I would love to stay and tell you more about the initiative and proposition process here in California, but the next election is less than a month away and those ballot pamphlets and voting guides are stacking up on the kitchen table.  I gotta' get to work.

Expanding Willow Glen

Willow Glen - Personal, Friendly, Different.  What the...?

When scientist David Hubble made the discovery that the Universe was expanding in 1929, he couldn't possibly have known that in eighty years the fastest growing part of our Galaxy would be the neighborhood in San Jose in which I grew up: Willow Glen.

A sleepy farming community of orchards and dirt roads in its infancy over a hundred years ago, Willow Glen was first incorporated as a town in 1927.  The increasingly urbanized hamlet needed a sewage system to accommodate its growing population, and voted to join the city of San Jose by a 57 vote margin in 1936.

As a young child and then teenage resident of Willow Glen, I only knew it as a boring, aging bedroom community close to downtown San Jose that was far removed from the more affluent and "hip" neighborhoods in the growing southern suburbs of San Jose.

The Willow Glen Chapel on the north side of Lincoln Avenue - founded by my late stepfather and owned and managed by he and my mother.

In the late 1970's and early 1980's, many of the older residents who had lived in Willow Glen for decades started to pass away or move on,  and their homes were bought by younger, wealthier homeowners - who in many cases completely gutted the charming, unique homes built in the 1920's and 1930's and replaced them with homes twice their size.

Young couples, especially those working long hours in the growing high tech industries, flocked to Willow Glen because of its walkable neighborhoods, good schools and tree-lined streets that didn't have the traffic gridlock of the tract homes and subdivisions of the southern suburbs.  By the 1990's, Willow Glen had grown into a gentrified, prosperous neighborhood of choice for discerning real estate buyers moving away from the suburbs and looking for an attractive, livable neighborhood close to downtown San Jose and the 280 freeway.

I lived in Willow Glen from fourth grade through High School.  I graduated from Willow Glen High School (Go Rams!).  My mother and stepfather operated a mortuary on Lincoln Avenue on the north side of Lincoln Avenue - the main commercial street in Willow Glen - that was called the Willow Glen Chapel.  My first job was mowing the lawn and trimming the bushes of that family run business.  When I started running, the first race I ever ran was the Founder Day's 10K that finished on Lincoln Avenue in Willow Glen.

The beautiful facade of the late Garden Theatre.

As a youngster with a growing love of cinema, I spent many a Saturday matinee in the majestic Garden Theatre (the grand old lady was sadly gutted and remodeled in 1988 into something Willow Glen truly needed instead of a movie theater -  a strip mall). 

The business district along Lincoln Avenue only featured a few chain establishments in my youth - a Baskin-Robbins, a Jack in the Box and a Round Table pizza.  Most of the shops and restaurants in Willow Glen were privately owned by local merchants - many of whom were friends of my parents. 

There wasn't a Sushi, Indian or Thai restaurant in sight.  The idea of a spa (there are now four) or Pilates studio (two) on Lincoln Avenue would have been absurd.

Today, Willow Glen is a prototypical gentrified Bay Area neighborhood complete with a Starbucks, Peet's Coffee, Noah's Bagels, Jamba Juice and a Bev Mo'.

Growing up as a child in Willow Glen I didn't really worry about its boundaries, but I was vaguely aware of when I was in Willow Glen and when I was not.  And I never heard of anyone who lived miles away from the remotest corner of Willow Glen and still claimed that they lived in Willow Glen.  That has now completely changed.

Bucolic, tree-lined Lincoln Avenue anchors the business district of Willow Glen.

Today, as I peruse the wanted ads, real estate sections and garage sales in San Jose, I am just amazed by how much Willow Glen has seemingly grown now that it's a trendy place to live.  Pick up a real estate magazine in San Jose and you'll be astonished by how many listings are supposedly in Willow Glen. 

It wouldn't surprise me if there is a realtor with a residential listing in faraway Gilroy who is advertising it as "on the edge of Willow Glen." Yeah, in the same way that the Tenderloin in San Francisco is on the edge of Nob Hill and Culver City in Los Angeles is on the edge of Santa Monica.  These places are just not in any part of Willow Glen that I ever knew.

I guess Willow Glen proves that Mr. Hubble was correct after all.  Our universe really is expanding.  And I would bet that interstellar brokers throughout the galaxy are touting Mars as the next fashionable place to live.  It is, after all, the closest planet to Earth - making it conveniently located to Willow Glen.

Getting Tagged and Hacked

A local artiste makes their mark on the fence in our front yard.

I knew it was coming.  Our neighborhood isn't bad, but it's most definitely urban and mixed use.  We live just a mile north of downtown San Jose.  There is a Liquor Store (spelled Kuik Mart on one side and Qwik Mart on the other) and a Salvation Army store up the street to the north.  There's a bus company and a pita bakery across the street.  Two blocks to the east is a Starbucks and a Jamba Juice - just across the street from our neighborhood gay bar.  Amidst all that commerce, there's also a house at the end of our block for sale for $899,000 (recently reduced from $949,000!).  It's definitely a diverse neighborhood.

The commuter train station near our house.

Homeless people are a regular fixture of the neighborhood - the boys like to boast that their school is the only one in San Jose with its own train station and hobos - and some of the locals are kind enough to leave empty shopping carts on our front lawn on a weekly basis.  Need an empty soda bottle or a worthless lottery ticket?  How about an empty coffee cup or an empty pack of cigarettes?  They're all free for the taking in the nearest gutter on a daily basis right on our street.  Everything you'd ever want or need right out your front door! 

So it wasn't really a surprise when I walked out of the house on a recent Sunday morning, headed out to the car, stopped and looked to my right, only to realize a little white fence on the corner of our front yard had been "tagged" with some graffiti overnight.  I didn't even feel that angry or violated, mostly just resigned.  If you live in any urban area in America like San Jose, the odds are at some point you're going to get tagged with some graffiti.

I'm blaming it on Banksy.  Every punk with a spray can is now an urban Picasso (if they only had any idea who Picasso was) thanks to Banksy and the documentary film (or was it?) Exit through the Gift Shop.  Netflix and Hulu are the gateway drugs to urban vandalism and street crime.

San Jose isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, a crime-ridden or lawless city.  Sure, we have plenty of your garden variety gang and drug activity, but the crime rate here is actually pretty low for a city of this size.  Still, I've lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Dublin, Ireland, and this was the first time my residence has been tagged.  But I still knew it was coming.

We had the fence painted over and the graffiti has yet (fingers crossed) to reappear.

Then a couple of days later, one of my e-mail accounts was hacked.  You may remember the friendly e-mail you received from me informing you about the great online deals for Viagra from a pharmacy in the Great White North.  Or something like that.

I have no idea how it was done; I never check my e-mail on a public computer or give my password out to anyone, but I basically sat there and watched it happen.  I was on my laptop with my e-mail account open when all of these bad e-mail address notices started popping up in my "in box" - about 15 of them.  I took a look at one and immediately realized I had been hacked.

Quickly moving into my e-mail account settings, I changed my password from 6 characters (mixed letters and numbers) to more than 12 characters (mixed letters and numbers and mixed upper and lower case letters).  I would give you the password if I could, but it's now so long and convoluted that I have no idea what it is anymore.

After changing my e-mail password, I went through all my other online accounts just to make sure I didn't use that e-mail and the same password on anything else.  I didn't.  I changed and strengthened a few anyway, just for good measure.

But now I have so many different "handles" and "passwords" for all my various e-mail and online accounts that I can't remember anything anymore.  I'm so secure that half the time I have locked myself out of my own account.  Some young Russian teenage hacker can probably check my Netflix queue easier than I can.

I have noticed in the couple of weeks since it happened that several other friends of mine have also had their e-mail accounts hacked.  A few have made sheepish apologies on Facebook, but I don't think that's even necessary at this point.  If you haven't been hacked yet, it's just luck, and at some point it's coming.

When you live in San Jose and get hacked, the nice thing is that a few of your friends who really know a LOT about computers and servers and network security, etc. send you a little note letting you know what happened.  I had a little chat with one friend of ours who specializes in computer security (he was shocked it happened to a Mac user) and he basically said there isn't much you can do about it.  C'est la vie.

Welcome to America in the 21st Century.  In all those Sci-Fi books, films and TV shows of my youth that tried to predict life in the future, I don't recall Captain Kirk or Spock having to change their passwords after getting hacked.  You want Sci-Fi authenticity?  How about "Spock Sucks" painted in spray paint along the side of the Enterprise?  That's really where men are boldly going to go.  Where many have gone before, and many will go again.

(Post-Script:  After I finished and posted this piece this morning, I noticed this article in today's San Jose Mercury News, stating that graffiti/tagging is way up in San Jose and throughout California.)

San Jose Goes Straight

It's interesting what you notice when you move to a new place.  Odd regional quirks the locals - the residents who have been there a long time - don't even give a second thought.

My job forced me to live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for nine months in 1988.  The day after I had driven my car cross-country from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, I drove down the nearest on-ramp to get on the Parkway (freeway) to the airport.  The car in front of me started to slow down - for no apparent reason - as it approached the "yield" sign at the end of the ramp.  It slowed to a complete stop  at the "yield" sign - there wasn't any other traffic in sight - and then proceeded to speed up and merge onto the freeway.

It was the strangest and darndest thing I had ever seen.  Coming from Los Angeles, you never slowed down with open space in front of you on any piece of pavement.  Ever.  I just wrote off this odd road behavior as one isolated incident.

Within the next few days, and after talking to a few friends from California and locals in Pittsburgh, I learned it was just local custom among many drivers in Pittsburgh to slow down to a complete stop at the "yield" sign on the freeway on-ramps when merging on to a freeway - even if it wasn't a busy time of day or there wasn't any traffic in sight.  They decided to treat the "yield" sign as a "stop" sign.  Nobody knew how or why this happened.

I can't tell you how many of us from California nearly rear-ended local drivers as we were accelerating to freeway cruising speed heading down a freeway on-ramp and they were slowing down to...a...complete...stop.  At the "yield" sign.  Arrrrgggghhh!

That's the kind of little thing you notice when you move to a new place.

I grew up in San Jose in the 1960's and 1970's - moving away in 1981 - and returned nearly thirty years later.  Much had changed in my absence, but it's these little things - common culture and local customs - that I've really noticed.

One of these is turn signals.  Or the complete lack thereof.  I've observed that most drivers in San Jose have completely abandoned the use of turn signals.  I'm sure people still used their turn signals when I first got my license and started driving here as a young teen.  I distinctly remember turn signal usage was covered in the Driver's handbook, and covered on both the written and driving tests.  Somewhere along the way in the intervening thirty years, the drivers of San Jose have collectively decided that turn signals are not worth the effort.

I find myself driving behind people now trying to guess their directional intentions by watching their head movements and the speed and movement of their car.  If they're in the far right hand lane and start to slow down and veer to the right, that's a pretty good indication that they're making a right turn, although even that behavior isn't full-proof in San Jose.  But driving behind them, you would never be forewarned of that intention by the use of anything so pedestrian as a turn signal. 

Left turns are tougher to predict.  There are numerous busy four lane roads in San Jose without a center turn lane.  It's a daily occurrence here where I'll be driving on a busy four lane street in the left lane and the person in front of me will suddenly slam on their brakes, stopping in the middle of the road, and sit there until a break in the oncoming traffic allows them to make their left turn.  This maneuver may take 10 - 15 seconds and a turn signal isn't activated during this entire time.

Having lived here for two years, I've now seen this behavior enough that I can predict it at this point.  Maybe everyone who has lived here for years is able to predict the turn behavior of all the cars in front of them as well, and this psychic ability has rendered turn signals obsolete within the city limits.  All I know is that San Joseans disdain their turn signals.  The turn signal lever is the vehicular version of an appendix.  Every car comes with one, but it serves no useful purpose.  Why bother?

Turn signal usage is so rare in San Jose that when I'm driving in the car with my family I actually point it out.

"Wow!  Look at that guy!  He's actually using his turn signal!"

These words don't pass my lips very often.

When we lived up in Sonoma County, we used to have a little saying - derived from the friendly rivalry that only two adjacent, bucolic, affluent, wine-producing regions can brew up - that "Sonoma meant good wine, while Napa meant auto parts."

I rarely see an auto parts store in San Jose.  I know they're out there - I bought some new wiper blades last year - but they're tough to find.  Maybe everyone's turn signal bulbs in San Jose are broken and they just can't find an auto parts store to replace the bulb.  Everyone in the city continues to use the turn signal lever in their car when they drive, blissfully unaware that the signal bulb hasn't been working since the Carter administration.  But I doubt it.

I suspect the more likely culprits are cell phones and smart phones.  Drivers here in San Jose aren't crazy or fast or filled with road rage, but they are unquestionably distracted.  Very, very distracted.  They love their phones.  And it's not easy to code your next iPhone app when you're continually distracted by the drivers around you.

We live a couple of blocks from the main police station in San Jose, so at our nearest freeway on/off-ramp around the times of day when the police make their shift changes, you can spot literally dozens of S.J.P.D. squad cars at intersections in our neighborhood.  These officers are WITHOUT QUESTION the undisputed kings of cell phone usage while driving.  They might as well have their cell phones surgically attached to the sides of their heads because I never see them driving by a nearby intersection without a cell phone.  Never on a Bluetooth headset either - always holding one up to their ears.  While making a turn at a major intersection.  Without a turn signal, of course.  So there's your modeling.

Like the beta version of a new gadget, I'm not buying it.  I don't text or talk on the cell phone while I drive.  If a call or a text comes in I need to immediately answer, I will actually take the radical step of waiting until I can safely stop and then answer the phone, using my turn signal as I pull over.

I vow to be the last person in San Jose remaining who still uses a turn signal.  Anthropologists will study my turn signal usage for years to come.  I am just too set in my driving habits.  After years and years of practice, I use my turn signal for even the most mundane turns in quiet neighborhoods.  I'm too old to change the act at this point.  Besides, maybe it's my subconscious way of letting people know that I don't plan to stay here.  I'm not changing my ways to match yours because in two years I'll be gone.  And you can have your distracted town, without turn signals, all to yourselves.

You can call me a throwback, a relic, version 1.0; but if you're ever driving around San Jose and you observe a driver using a turn signal, be sure to wave as you pass by - because the odds are that will be me.

San Jose's Top Ten

From the home office in Alviso, California (with apologies to David Letterman):

San Jose, CA: the self-appointed Capital of Silicon Valley.

TOP TEN REASONS TO LIVE IN SAN JOSE:

10.  The weather.  It's 80 degrees under blues skies today.  And every other day.  Think of all the time you'll save not having to pay attention to a weather report between March and October.

9.  The word "Garage Sale" is now obsolete (that's so 1.0) - you will now be able to purchase the same useless knick-knacks from your neighbor, and tell everyone you bought them at an "Estate Sale."

8.  Conveniently located world-class theatre, museums and fine dining - just 50 miles north in San Francisco.

7.  Speeding tickets no longer issued in the city of San Jose - budget problems have forced dismissal of entire police force.

6.  Don't worry about residents rioting or looting after local NHL team loses in the Stanley Cup Finals - the Sharks have never even APPEARED in the Stanley Cup Finals.

5.  Did we mention the weather? 

4.  Never know when you'll walk into a local watering hole and go home with the latest prototype of the new Apple iPhone™.

3.  Drive-up medical marijuana co-ops conveniently located on every corner.

2.  Worried about your inability to write well or properly speak English?  Never a problem in San Jose!

1.  "Dude, what an awesome day!  Let's score some weed and check out the Estate Sales."

San Jose Lights Up

Every major city in America has a free, tabloid style weekly that covers restaurants, theatre, music and movies such as the Village Voice in New York, the L.A. Weekly in Los Angeles, the Bay Guardian in San Francisco and even the Bohemian in l'il ol' Sonoma County.

San Jose's arts and culture weekly is called Metro.  It's free, widely distributed and occasionally carries an interesting or noteworthy story that doesn't involve high tech.

These weeklies are free to readers to encourage as high a circulation as possible, which makes them more attractive to local advertisers.  The back pages of these weeklies are stuffed with ads.  If you'd looked at them about ten years ago, you would have seen some classified ads and LOTS of personal ads that made it seem like EVERYONE in that town was looking for someone special.  Many of those people had someone special and were still looking for someone special. 

"You - a quiet librarian type who loves walks along the beach, yoga and a biker guy with lots of tattoos.  Me - ruggedly handsome Josh Brolin type who loves to ride and party, looking for that perfect gal to ride off with me on the back of my hog."  You get the picture.

Then the internet dating sites came along and took those personal ads with them.  So the weeklies sent out their sales people and they reeled in the escort services (or so I'm told).  The backs of these weeklies were filled with enticing ads for one beautiful lady (or man) after another, dying to spend the evening with one special person - you (or so I'm told).

You can't buy love, but you could rent it.

A county by county map of the Prop. 215 voting.

Then the escort ad traffic drifted over to the internet (or so I'm told), and once again the weeklies were forced to send out their sales forces to find a new gravy train.

Eureka!  They realized that the voters of California had helpfully passed a state initiative (Proposition 215) in California that allowed for the medical use of marijuana.  It passed rather easily with 56% of the vote. 

The initiative didn't really cover how marijuana was to be cultivated, regulated or sold for this medicinal use. So-called "medical" co-ops and collectives started popping up in every city in California.

Which brings us back to the weeklies.  I've noticed in the San Jose Metro that the growth of medical marijuana clinics in and around San Jose is exploding.  A recent story said the number of these clinics has DOUBLED in San Jose in the past two years.  There are now nearly a hundred in San Jose alone.  While it's positive to have ANY business showing signs of growth in our current economy, the medicinal marijuana industry is now reminiscent of the Wild, Wild West.  If those old gunfighters had just, like, mellowed out, dude.

And in this week's edition of the Metro, the ads for the marijuana clinics in San Jose take up ten full pages of the weekly paper.  A one time full page color ad buy in the Metro is $2,300.  That's a lot of mary jane moolah.  In all fairness,  it goes down to $1,900 an issue if you buy one full page ad a month.  Once you start buying full page medical marijuana ads, it's tough to stop at just one, right?

What's interesting if you start examining these ads is that these "collectives" are ALL OVER TOWN.  They are everywhere.  Presumably with a McDonald's or 7-11 located right next door.  It's another Gold Rush, only this time it's Acapulco gold,  in every medium to large-sized city in California.

There are virtually zero zoning laws and regulations regarding these clinics.  Certainly nothing on a statewide basis.

I find it hard to believe that the actual usage of these sweet herbs has dramatically increased since the passage of Proposition 215, there doesn't seem to be much research or data on any of this stuff because the government doesn't want to do any research on this stuff.

There may actually be a benefit to users being guaranteed a consistent, safe supply of the drug.  I assume all the competition is keeping the cost down, which lessens the illegal trafficking and cash-starved local governments could use the tax dollars.

But it just seems odd when marijuana clinics are the most robust retail outlets in San Jose.  They're definitely giving Starbucks a run for their money.  Care for a hemp Grande?

And if you're looking for someone to do something about it, don't look to Dave.  Dave who?  Dave's not here, man. 

A Company Town

The headquarters of Adobe Systems in downtown San Jose, CA.

Many people live in company towns - a term which originally meant a town literally built by one company (such as Hershey, PA), but which more commonly now defines a place where one major company or industry dominates the entire economy and culture - their entire lives.

Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

Detroit (Automobiles), Seattle (Boeing, Microsoft), Orlando (Disney), Napa/Sonoma (Wine/Tourism), Hartford (Insurance), Las Vegas (Gambling/Tourism), Washington, D.C. (Government) all immediately come to mind as large company towns in the U.S.

When I grew up in San Jose, CA in the 1960's and 1970's, it was not a company town.  Even if you tried to make the argument that it was; that single industry would have been agriculture.  I remember fields and orchards sprinkled throughout the valley, and vineyards covering the hillsides.  Somewhere in the last thirty years it definitely has become a company town for High Technology: the Capitol of Silicon Valley. 

The riverside headquarters of Cisco Systems in San Jose, CA.

I often ride my bike along the Guadalupe River Trail in San Jose.  The Trail presents a backyard tour of many of the High Tech companies that now dominate the economy of Santa Clara County.

The headquarters of Cisco Systems (above right) is one of those many High Tech companies that line the Guadalupe River & Trail.

Driving or biking around San Jose and Santa Clara County today, you regularly spot headquarters and campuses of some of the most recognizable names in software, computing and the internet: Adobe, Cisco, eBay, Google, Intel, Netflix, Oracle and PayPal .

The eBay campus in San Jose, CA.

(The San Jose headquarters (LEFT) of eBay, the world famous online auction web site, that has annual revenues of nearly 10 billion dollars a year.)

I lived in a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. on and off in the 1970's, but I was too young to recognize it for the company town that it was and is, or even to realize what it meant.

I lived in Los Angeles in the 1980's, and while it's certainly a company town for the entertainment industry in terms of culture and visibility, its economy is actually more diverse than you might think.  There are seven Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Los Angeles, and not one of them is connected to the entertainment industry.

The first time I saw firsthand what it was like to reside in a company town was when I first started working for US Air in the late 1980's, and lived in Aliquippa, PA, just outside Pittsburgh.  US Air's headquarters weren't actually located in Pittsburgh, contrary to what many people seemed to believe (they were in Crystal City, Virginia), but Pittsburgh was then their largest hub, and the location where they employed the most people.  US Air dominated the air traffic, for better or worse, at the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, and seemed to dominate the city as well.  Everyone in Pittsburgh seemed to work for US Air, or be related to a US Air employee.  Many businesses offered discounts for US Air employees.  Local bars had "US Air" nights.

U.S. Airways pilots in the Pittsburgh airport.

The media in Pittsburgh covered US Air with a laser focus unseen in any other city.  If a flight was diverted for some mundane reason, a routine occurrence in the airline industry, or any other news, no matter how trivial, was available about US Air, it usually was on page one in the morning papers, and led the evening newscasts.

Apple, Inc. headquarters in Cupertino, CA.

Pittsburgh had long been a company town for the U.S. Steel industry.  I met several people there whose father worked in the mills, and THEIR father and so on and so on.  Hell, even MY grandfather worked in a steel mill in Pittsburgh.

And with that history came what outsiders called a"Steel Mill" mentality: this company or industry is too dominate or large to ever disappear, and I'm always going to have a job here.  An attitude that I'm sure once prevailed in other large company towns (think Detroit).

As an outsider, I could read the tea leaves in the airline industry and felt Pittsburgh was eventually going to be  a victim of poor US Air management, economics and airline consolidation.

Pittsburghers and the local media would complain about US Air's monopoly in Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh was what's known in the airline industry as a "fortress" hub, meaning one airline had such a high percentage of flights that it scared away competitors -  and the high fares that fortress hubs inevitably invite.  A valid complaint.

I would remind those who complained about US Air's monopoly in Pittsburgh that a city with a population under 400,000 people, and a declining economy, wouldn't have non-stop flights to London and Frankfurt, and multiple flights a day to such destinations as Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, were it not for US Air's hub in Pittsburgh.

Then I would assure them they weren't going to have their US Air monopoly problems for very long.  I felt the hub couldn't sustain itself, and would be gone within a few years.  Everyone from Pittsburgh just laughed and shook their heads at my predictions.  Steel Mill mentality.  US Air will always be big in Pittsburgh.  Unfortunately,  I was right.

The world's largest semiconductor chipmaker, Intel, is based in Santa Clara, CA.

When I returned to San Jose two years ago after a thirty year absence, it started to dawn on me that something was very different from the San Jose of my youth.  The vineyards and orchards had vanished, skyrocketing housing costs were among the highest in the nation and the population had doubled; sure, that was all immediately evident and all true.  But what I realized was that San Jose, and the surrounding suburbs of the South Bay that make up Santa Clara County, was now a COMPANY TOWN.

The economy, the culture, the politics, the residents were now completely dominated by the High Tech industry.  It's much easier to understand how and why things work and operate here in San Jose, if you understand that it's a company town, which it never was in my youth.

And once you reach that conclusion, the question arises if it's ultimately good for one area to be dominated by one company or industry.  Can a company town stay hungry?  Can it survive through the changes and turbulence in that industry?  Can it continue to innovate and grow, or does it inevitably develop that "Steel Mill" mentality?  

I'll let you know.  Right now, I'm still reading the tea leaves.  And there's no app for that.