The year 2025 has been big for LaRussell. He dropped collaborations with Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Montell Jordan and Lil Jon, played a critically acclaimed set on Outside Lands’ biggest stage and, just last weekend—for the first time in decades—brought E-40 to play LaRussell’s and the OG hyphy torchbearer’s hometown, Vallejo.

On Sunday, Sept. 21, LaRussell headlines the largest bill in Music in the Park’s 35 seasons: seven live acts and a DJ. The headlining San Jose performance showcases the deep connections within Bay Area culture. Speaking with LaRussell, one is immediately inspired by his mission to unite people through music. Of his work with young artists, he shares, “Man, it’s changed my life.”

“There weren’t many adults in my life that really saw my perspective,” he explains, “or views weren’t valued. I was not asked about how I felt and what I was experiencing.  With the youth that’s around us, they’re really cultivated. So to see all them flourish and shine, it’s really dope.”

LaRussell put out the word some time ago that he wanted to stage high-energy hip hop events where everyone is welcome. Music in the Park on a Sunday afternoon was a natural fit. “It’s my first time actually performing in San Jose,” LaRussell says. “They’ve been asking me for a [San Jose] show for years, and I haven’t been able to find a venue to accommodate what I wanted to do,” he says.

The South Bay and East Bay talent lineup includes 1990s underground hip hop pioneers Souls of Mischief, NPR Tiny Desk winner Ruby Ibarra, San Jose native rapper Kung Fu Vampire and Misa James, who recently was handpicked by LaRussell at an open mic he hosted with KQED.

“So, to do my first time in San Jose in this fashion is just ideal and perfect. We outside. We in a park. I get to run around and play football and just be immersed in the people. And I think that’s the best way for people to experience what I bring.

“Even when I was younger, when I was a kid, my dad used to wake me up every Sunday to go to the flea market out there. And we spend hours there just kind of getting material and moving around. So San Jose got a place in my heart.”

The excitement the upcoming show has generated is, in part, due to LaRussell’s mission as a transformative entrepreneur who brings a DIY model of artist empowerment to the music business.

“I really see music changing. I’ve literally watched the change of people going from streaming back to direct-to-consumer, back to in-real-life experiences.”

LaRussell says he has built infrastructure and platforms for artists to go direct. “I’ve seen some of the biggest artists in the world doing it now, and I get messages and calls from artists, like, how is this possible? How do you do this?

“For me, it’s much larger than hip hop. I’ve innovated and changed the way music and music business looks and works today. If you look online of any artist that’s like upcoming, their social media strategy mimics and mirrors what I’ve done for years. You know, we’ve set a blueprint for what this is and how to build your own, independent base and build something sustainable.”

LaRussell stays community-focused with backyard concerts and “​​pay what you want” pricing for some shows and album pre-orders.

He doesn’t have a manager or agent, and does deals himself. “As I’ve grown, I’ve just like, gotten better and better at it. And I know what I want best. You know, someone trying to speak on my behalf can’t speak the way I speak. They can’t talk to it the way I talk to them. They don’t see it the way I see it. So there’s no point in me having a middle man because it’s going to dilute my vision anyway,” he says. “I’m the best spokesperson for La Russell.”

LaRussell references heroes from the Black Liberation movement such as Huey P. Newton in his lyrics. “I feel, like, I’m a pivotal piece to the revolution that began. And, I’m in a state where my ancestors may not even have envisioned or seen possible.”

“When you come to my shows and you see the demographic and who’s there, from 1 to 100 Black, white, Indian, Mexican, every, every fucking race. It looks like a ‘We Are the World’ commercial at my shows. The people who were fighting before me couldn’t even see this, this side of it. You know, they were fighting for something that most didn’t live to see come to fruition. It’s very important for me to stand in my truth and who I am.”

LaRussell is pleased to play Music in the Park’s first hip hop show, 14 years after the seies was shut down for two years by city officials who believed the then-unticketed concerts attracted what they called an “undesirable element,” a euphemism for pot-smoking teenagers who wore sports team jerseys.

“San Jose? The reason I wasn’t able to do shows out there is because the venues that I did go to weren’t keen on bringing a hip hop show into the space.”

A Vallejan playing Plaza de César Chávez is also historic. It’s where California was founded and the state capitol sat for 16 months. That is, until Californio warlord Don Mariano Vallejo enticed hard-drinking legislators with a failed donation of 150 acres and $300,000 to build more comfortable digs—in Vallejo—than the edured at San Jose’s cramped, leaky and poorly lit Adobe Hotel, which stood at the Plaza. That slippery slope led to today’s state capitol in Sacramento, after brief detours in Vallejo and Benicia.

“I’ve been able to shift the narrative and the feeling around what hip hop is and what it’s supposed to be like. I’ve taken it back to the core and to the root. Hip hop is unification.”

LaRussell has relationships with many of the artists on the Sept. 21 bill, but won’t speculate if there will be any mainstage surprises. “It’s beautiful to see us all in one place together. You know, when magical people come together, magical things happen. So who knows what will occur.”

“I’m excited. Like I said, this is my first time in. San Jose’s the only place in the bay that I haven’t got to do a show in. But every time I pull up there, I just walk around and people are excited and the energy is there. So I can only imagine what this show is going to be like. It’s going to be a great homecoming.”

Mr. Ato Walker, local comedy impresario, co-conducted the interview and contributed to this piece. 

Metro editor Dan Pulcrano leads the Metro-affiliated team that produces Music in the Park.

Music in the Park’s final show of the season begins at 4pm on Sept. 21, with a bill that includes LaRussell, Souls of Mischief, Ruby Ibarra and Kung Fu Vampire. For tickets, visit CalTix.com.

An alert parent walking his kids to school around 8am on Aug. 28 detained a man outside Los Gatos’ Louise Van Meter Elementary School after he spotted him following girls with a smartphone in his hand. By 8:15am, 63-year-old Los Gatos resident John Alan Hale was in handcuffs along Los Gatos Boulevard.

I happened to pass the cluster of police cars and saw two scraped and bloodied men—one, a girl dad who had apprehended a man he believed was engaging in inappropriate conduct, and the other a Los Gatos homeowner with grown kids who’d shown up outside a school shortly before classes began.

The parent, who identified himself as Khalid, said Hale was walking behind students and was holding a device obscured by a wallet below their skirts. Khalid said that when he spoke to the man—whom police later identified as Hale—the suspect took off running. 

Khalid was able to grab and hold the suspect until police arrived. He said Hale punched and bit him. Khalid was bleeding from his leg and hand as he stood outside the Old Adobe Hair Shop, a short distance from the handcuffed man, who asked for an attorney. 

Khalid added that the smartphone appeared to be still in recording mode when it was placed on the seat of a police vehicle.

Hale was booked into Santa Clara County Main Jail, and bail was set at $200,000. According to jail records, he was released before the three-day holiday weekend was over. The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office confirmed that Hale posted bail and was released, but that the case has been assigned to a senior investigator in the sexual assault unit and is “under investigation.”

The Los Gatan contacted the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department to ask about the incident and was directed to send an email to pi*@********ca.gov. The department later posted the suspect’s identity to Facebook and Instagram, large, privately-run social media services based in Menlo Park that are sometimes used by government agencies to disseminate official information.

Hale “was taken into custody on charges related to annoying and harassing minors and battery,” according to the social media update.

“In addition, the investigation revealed that Hale had attempted to temporarily restrain a juvenile in the course of his actions and therefore he is being charged with attempted kidnapping,” LGMSPD said.

A spokesperson for the Los Gatos Union School District declined to go into detail before notifying parents and staff members about the case.

“Our focus is taking care of our school community,” said Karen Briones, the communications official. “We are working closely with the police department on this.”

“Should you have additional information related to this incident or the suspect involved, please contact Detective Heather Murphy at the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department at 408-824-3228,” LGMSPD posted.

Freestyle music traces its origins to New York City and it took flight in Miami, but one key link in its commercial breakout can be traced to a chance encounter in San Jose.

Drummer Donnie Macala lived here for about 17 years, from 1984 to 2001, and he remembers the day well. His family had moved to the mainland from Hawaii following his high school graduation. “I was living near Capital Expressway and McLaughlin. I played bass, drums and keyboards,” Macala says. “Stevie did a show over at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds. This was back in December of ’87.”

“The show bombed,” laughs Steven Bernard Hill, who’s better known as Stevie B. The Miami native had moved to White Road in San Jose’s Berryessa neighborhood and was collaborating with Upstairs Records’ John Lopez. He played local clubs such as Harry Evans’ Tropicana.

Macala remembers Hill walking around the Fairgrounds after his set and being introduced to San Jose freestyle producer Dadgel Atabay. Macala handed Hill a cassette tape of a song called “Love Me for Life.”

As Hill tells it, “I said, I’m looking for a keyboard player. You want to go on a road with me? This was three days before Christmas. They both came with me and have been with me now for almost 35 years.”

The team recorded in New York and the debut album came out in 1988. It featured three blockbusters, including “Party My Body” and “Spring Love,” two of the biggest hits of the freestyle era.

Between 1988 and 1991 Stevie B had seven singles that charted on the Billboard 100, including five in the top 40 and one that spent four weeks as the chart’s number one hit.  That one, “Because I Love You (The Postman Song),” knocked Whitney Houston’s “I’m Your Baby Tonight” out of first position in December 1990 and blocked Madonna’s “Justify My Love” from reaching the top spot until January 1991.

Today he’s known as “The King of Freestyle” and the movement’s most successful artist. Stevie had spent much of his youth navigating the hardscrabble neighborhoods of South Florida, before heading to Tallahassee for college on a tennis scholarship. “I came back to Miami, started my studio.”

Later, San Jose became his second home. “I developed my love affair with San Jose and the Bay Area. And that was before Silicon Valley.”

Evans, who ran the Tropicana and Studio 47, says Stevie B was his biggest draw. “He always did well for me,” Evans said.

Former San Jose city council member Xavier Campos recalls, “I used to see him walking around the Valley Fair Shopping Center.”

I will admit I was a bit surprised when this month’s July 25 Stevie B show became Music in the Park’s fastest selling show of the 2020s (Metro’s team has managed the series for four seasons now). And even more surprised when Stevie B himself called from Miami and related how he put his genre-defining band together while living in San Jose and then went on to become the top selling freestyle artist. It’s a story that hasn’t been reported much anywhere.

During that era, I’d spent more time at One Step Beyond seeing bands like the Ramones, Jane’s Addiction and the Replacements than showing up at the dance clubs like downtown’s Club Tropicana at 47 Notre Dame Ave., which morphed into Studio 47 and was torn down in 2005 to make way for the Axis residential high-rise.

The coverage desert is in part a story of media bias. Freestyle didn’t show up on the covers of Rolling Stone, Spin or the Village Voice. The music press and its critics were enamored with indie, grunge and alternative rock, staples of college radio, rather than the flashy, danceable beat of popular culture. 

The freestyle movement emerged sometime after the late ’70s dance music era remembered for artists like Donna Summer and the Bee Gees, and movies like Saturday Night Fever. There were some chart topping hits, until the Seattle bands replaced gold chains and hair product with the ripped jeans aesthetic. 

But it never went away, and the elitist disdain memorialized in memes like “Disco Sucks,” turned out to be mainstream society’s way of marginalizing LGBTQ culture and communities of color, as well as a convenient way out for music writers who couldn’t dance. The fusion of electro pop, hip hop and dance music ensconced itself as an underground counterculture when the previous alternative movements became dominant cultural forces. 

A musical fusion that had begun in New York’s Puerto Rican, Dominican and Italian American communities found its way to South Florida and was then embraced by the Bay Area’s Mexican American and Pacific Islander communities, with San Jose as its California epicenter.

In Miami last month, a stage full of break dancers, spinning on their heads, was on full display at the Dolphin Mall’s Vivo venue. Band after band and deejay after deejay took the stage before headliner Stevie B, who carried the vocal duties with the help of a backing track due to losing his voice earlier in the evening.

July 25: Stevie B, Jaya, Shannon, Cutso

Music in the Park

Plaza de Cesar Chavez

CalTix.com

The 1970s and ’80s were transformative decades for what’s now known as the LGBTQ+ community. This was the era in which a once-closeted subculture first spoke its truth, fought for fundamental civil rights and combatted a lethal epidemic.

Photographer Ted Sahl visited Metro’s offices more than once in its early days to share photographs he captured as a chronicler of a peaceful revolution. Bespectacled, scrappy and filled with nervous energy, Sahl’s Zelig-like ubiquitousness documented a history that’s now meticulously archived by San Jose State University’s Special Collections team.

New Museum Los Gatos shares Sahl’s epic images in its new exhibit. It’s a reminder that we watch history every day and only realize it when it’s in a university collection or on the walls of a museum. Wait, wasn’t that the guy at the front desk not too long ago?

Prophets are rarely acknowledged in their times, and Ted Sahl was an unacknowledged independent photojournalist. His images of legends like Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk and Divine as well as important local actors like Susan Hammer, Susie Wilson, Blanca Alvarado, Ken Yeager, Sal Accardi, Peter Baez and Wiggsy Sivertsen are captured in raw black-and-white frames. 

He brings us not only to the political front lines, but into the leather bars and womyn’s spots before DTSJ clubs like F/X mainstreamed gay culture and apps like Grindr re-engineered social norms.

The era of acceptance and pride faces grave challenges today, as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has identified 588 anti-LGBTQ bills presently coursing their way through U.S. state legislatures. An eye on history is always a contextual check on the present moment.

—Dan Pulcrano, Editor

Little is known about the life of late local photographer Ted Sahl. He was born in 1927 and grew up outside of Boston. He served in the Navy in 1947 and later moved to the Bay Area, where he began taking pictures in the 1960s. After his death in Campbell sometime in the mid-2000s, Sahl’s archives were donated to San Jose State University’s King Library Digital Collections, which houses more than 12,000 of his images.

But we can learn more about Sahl through his photography, thanks to New Museum Los Gatos’ new exhibit, Snapshots of Pride: Photographer Ted Sahl’s Chronicle of the South Bay LGBTQ+ Community, which runs May 30 through Oct. 5.

The collection features paintings, drawings, poetry, newspaper clippings, personal items and a copy of his 2002 book, From Closet to Community: A Quest for Gay & Lesbian Liberation in San Jose and Santa Clara County, not to mention approximately 70 photographs, mostly from the 1970s and ’80s, organized according to politics, activism, culture, the AIDS crisis and other subjects.

“I want people to understand that this gentleman took 12,000 photographs in his own time and with his own money,” says exhibit curator Amy Long. “There were unique things happening in this area, and without those photographs, we would have probably almost no record of what was going on down here aside from people’s yellowed photo albums in their junk drawers. This is an absolutely incredible, massive historical record for the South Bay area to have.”

Sahl was photographing anti-war, anti-nuclear and farm labor strikes when, in 1978, he stumbled on a clash between gay men and women and members of religious groups. The San Jose City Council planned to declare Gay Pride Week for the first time in 1978, two years after the city’s first pride parade, but the idea was met with opposition. San Jose didn’t declare Gay Pride Week until 2001.

Sahl would spend the next 30 years photographing city council meetings, protests, voter registrations, AIDS clinics, candlelight vigils, parades, beauty pageants, leather contests and male and female impersonators, working for such publications as Lamda News, the South Bay News and Valley View Magazine. He documented key events and notable figures who were part of the evolution of the gay community in and around San Jose.

People like Los Gatos activist and SJSU professor Wiggsy Sivertsen and Desperados club owner Billy DeFrank—a well-known African-American drag performer, for whom the Billy DeFrank LGBTQ+ Community Center was posthumously named. Sahl also shot plenty of famous folk, namely Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, John Waters star Divine and legendary theater troupe the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. One image of San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk shows him at Gay Pride San Jose in 1978, the year he was assassinated.

“Desperados was in a mini mall,” Long recalls. “But it became extremely important. Downtown San Jose in the ’80s was literally tumbleweeds. There was nothing happening in downtown. There was no core street or area. So to have those community centers, events, organizations, publications and gay bars became even more critical. You had to get in your car and go be with your people. You couldn’t just walk out your door and sit on your front step and have a parade. It took a little more effort and organizing, which is really important.”

Long hopes to show viewers of the exhibit that San Jose, like many other small towns, has helped shape the history of the gay pride movement as much as big cities have.

“We hear a lot, and with good reason, about San Francisco, New York and L.A.,” Long says. “But I want people who live here to know that on a local level, the fight was just as important, just as significant. And on some levels, harder. And it happened in their backyard.

“The suburbs are a microcosm of what goes on nationally,” Long continues. “If you can reach the suburbs and can get to the Joneses, and be accepted in your neighborhood, that helps move things along in our society. So the whole topic of a gay community and gay liberation in the suburbs has a different level of significance. It’s not better, not worse. It’s not about competition. It’s just different. It’s a whole different flavor.”

Snapshots of Pride runs through Oct. 5 at New Museum Los Gatos, 106 E. Main St., Los Gatos. Admission is $10. numulosgatos.org

Find the entire Ted Sahl Archives at digitalcollections.sjsu.edu.

The race to fill the downtown city council seat vacated by Omar Torres’ resignation is now San Jose’s most expensive district race ever.

First there’s the estimated $2 to $3.2 million cost of distributing, collecting and counting the ballots. Then, more than $1 million has already been spent on the candidates’ campaigns—both by the candidates and their contributors, and the committees independently spending money to elect them. And the big race has just begun.

At stake is the balance of the city council, precariously divided between members aligned with a business-friendly centrist mayor and a progressive faction allied with the South Bay Labor Council and its member unions. 

Downtown’s post-pandemic future, the city’s economic future and how San Jose will house its residents, including its unsheltered population, will be affected by the anticipated low turnout election’s outcome. 

The seven-way runoff was widely expected to come down to a June 24 runoff between the South Bay Labor Council’s candidate, top vote getter Gabby Chavez-Lopez, and Mayor Matt Mahan-endorsed city hall staffer Matthew Quevedo. Quevedo raised the most money, about $250,000, and another $80,000 in PAC money supported his run. 

Combined, more than $1.1 million was spent by or for Chavez-Lopez and Quevedo during the three-month campaign.The mayoral aide’s narrow early lead, however, melted in the days following April 8, as final numbers trickled in. 

When all the ballots were counted, Anthony Tordillos bested Quevedo by all of six votes, and the results were confirmed on a recount. The surprise upset pits the 33-year-old chair of the city’s planning commission against the region’s most powerful political organization. South Bay Labor and its affiliated committees. Those entities spent $535,912 on top of Chavez-Lopez’s modest war chest of $151,897. At $264 spend per vote, that’s record-setting locally, if not nationally. 

By comparison, unsuccessful Orange County Congressional candidate Michelle Steele and her allies spent $77 per vote in last fall’s eye-popping $10 million campaign. Jon Tester broke the U.S. Senate record at $396 per vote in 2024 in his failed $96 million bid to keep his Montana seat.

As for Tordillos, he raised just $14,661 and contributed $130,000 of personal funds to his own campaign, while refusing contributions from lobbyists or corporations. In a Metro interview, Tordillos, who manages a software engineering team at Google’s YouTube subsidiary, said he is “fortunate to have had a very successful career.” 

“I grew up in a working class family [and] was the first person in my family to go to college,” he said. “I had the opportunity to go to Yale, where I met my husband, and I’ve been very blessed since then to have had a very successful career that has enabled me to invest in my campaign.”

Tordillos, who says he will quit his job at Google and take a pay cut if he’s elected, identifies as a YIMBY who sees high, dense housing near transit lines as a solution to the housing affordability crisis. “I think the research is very clear here that increasing market rate housing production does help to provide elasticity in the market and slows the rate of rent increases. In cities like Austin, which has built ten times as much housing in recent years, we’ve seen rents fall year over year. 

“I think there’s clear evidence that even market rate housing, you know, what might sometimes be called luxury housing can go a long way towards slowing rent increases and helping address our affordability crisis. 

“At the same time, I think that there is clearly a space for continued investment in subsidized housing, below market rate housing. People on the lower end of the earnings scale really benefit from the security provided by affordable housing. And then there’s a lot of people kind of in that middle earning bracket who could benefit from having stable housing where they don’t have to worry about severe rent increases that might displace them over time.”

In addition to investing in affordable housing, Tordillos supports creating temporary shelters and safe sleeping sites as an alternative to encampments on freeway ramps and along creek riverbeds.

During the interview at a coffee shop near San Jose State University, Tordillos wonkishly discussed issues ranging from public safety solutions to economic development. His colleague on the planning commission, Pierluigi Oliverio, observed, “He clearly reads everything on the agenda. He’s a quick learner, and understands issues.”

In contrast to Tordillos’ muted style, his opponent in the city council race is outgoing and dresses in primary colors that match the bright graphics on her campaign signs. She dropped by our office in a teal pantsuit and fielded questions about the issues facing the city and the district.

The CEO of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, a leadership training program with annual budgets in the mid-six figures according to its most recently posted public filings, Chavez-Lopez says she is well aware of the homelessness problem in the downtown business district a subject that has taken center stage in the special election’s discussions.

“I have 13 women on my staff, and our offices are on Santa Clara and Second Street. So, as you can imagine, these are experiences that I think about. And as it relates to our unhoused, you know, it’s a pervasive issue,” Chavez-Lopez said.

Chavez-Lopez did not offer a specific plan as to how she would address the problems as a councilmember. “I think for me thinking that the city is going to solve this problem on its own and it has the resources to do so and the know-how to do so, I think is shortsighted.

“What I envision is really being able to work very focused with our now-county supervisor, Betty Duong, to prioritize a pilot in D3—in particular, our downtown core—that would satisfy, I think, a lot of the objectives of what the county might want. 

“The pilot would actually be an intervention. In particular, we could define an area of town, we could define certain pockets that really need an intervention and really work with the folks that are providing mental health services, that are providing drug treatment services to really hone in on.

“I think that we need to come together and create something that hasn’t been created before, quite frankly. And so I’m not coming in saying that I have all the solutions, but I’m committed to working with our county supervisor in order to come up with an emergency pilot program that’s specific to our downtown core.”

Using police and the courts to enforce anti-camping rules isn’t in the cards, however, from Chavez-Lopez’s view.

“I definitely disagree with letting the courts get involved. That’s probably a distinct contrast to what I think—this is what we don’t do,” she said.

Chavez-Lopez criticizes the way the mayor’s program was implemented. “You can’t act like a maverick in these situations where you just come in and you’re like, I’m going to make this happen because I’m going to wave my magic wand and make it happen. No, you got to engage everyone that’s involved in that implementation from start to finish.”

What would she do to address the unsheltered homelessness? “I don’t have a temporary housing plan right now. …  I’m not inside of City Hall. I don’t have the level of information and understanding,” Chavez-Lopez says.

While not signing on to the mayor’s controversial program to enforce laws against illegal camping, Tordillos believes code enforcement may be a tool to improve the downtown environment, particularly when it comes to property owners whose properties create public nuisances.

Last week, Mayor Mahan endorsed Tordillos while the two acknowledged they don’t necessarily align on every issue. This week, the candidate that Mahan defeated to become mayor, former supervisor and SBLC CEO Cindy Chavez, holds a fundraiser for Chavez-Lopez. The ongoing divisions continue to shape San Jose’s future.

It’s likely that a huge amount of money will be spent in the next seven weeks to shape the public’s perceptions of the two candidates, and their policies.

As someone who has lived and worked in district three for many years, I hope that quality of life issues, like playgrounds, schools and cultural amenities, will somehow be improved by whomever wins an election that will be funded heavily by developers and public employee unions with self-interested economic goals.

When I stepped into the neighborhood voting station last month, the four voting officials who spent 11 days accepting ballots were very glad to see a resident show up to vote in person. 

“We’ve been talking to each other for days now, and have had many deep and meaningful conversations, but we have run out of things to talk about,” one of the workers confessed.

I chatted for a bit but apologized and said I had to get home, a bit guilty knowing that it would probably be hours before the next one showed up, ballot in hand. 

To those who’ve watched downtown San Jose navigate a half century of trying to build itself into a regional center, the notion that prosperity is just around the corner is a bit of a punchline.

During the ’80s, a convention center, a luxury hotel, a retail plaza, a sports arena and a handful of highrise office buildings were going to transform San Jose into Silicon Valley’s capital. Then the Gulf War recession hit. San Jose’s socially conservative leadership shut down downtown’s most vital attraction: the club district that brought not-yet-famous bands like Nirvana and Green Day to small stages. The new luxury shopping mall became a data center.

The center of gravity swung north during the Internet boom of the 1990s’ second half. Some economic momentum rebounded after the millennium but the 2008 banking crisis popped that bubble too. By 2013, San Jose was being derided by venture capitalists as a “rust belt” city and San Francisco became a technology talent magnet and home base for high-flying digital brands.

Then came Google, which in 2016 kicked off a buying frenzy of downtown San Jose properties, driving up values and expectations. After spending more than half a billion buying up land and developing plans for a city within a city, Google paused the project in 2023. 

San Francisco billionaire Jay Paul made a similar nine-figure investment in 2020 with hopes to build almost 4 million square feet of highrise offices on downtown’s 8.1-acre CityView Plaza. Last month, the developer pivoted to adaptive reuse of the office buildings for a residential and retail remake.

Another active land assembler is Gary Dillabough’s Urban Community group, who with collaborators Westbank and Terrascape Ventures control major chunks on six downtown blocks. 

The decade of speculative real estate activity has left parts of downtown fenced and emptied, brightened a bit by murals, activations, orange ping pong tables, block parties and pop-ups but not a real economy. Except for two earlier Jay Paul projects, none of the Big 3’s projects have broken ground, while more focused efforts such as The Fay residential tower overlooking Interstate 280 and Urban Catalyst’s rehab of the former Cinema 12 building have seen completion.

First, the Good News

San Jose’s penchant for chasing shiny objects and enabling magical thinking has left big-ticket projects sitting behind chain link fences. Meanwhile, smaller, entrepreneurial ventures are forging ahead, confirming the value of community-rooted independent players.

Some examples are elegant concept restaurants Eos & Nyx on Second Street and The Pressroom near San Pedro Square. Amongst the city’s coolest spots, they dress up well at night and will serve downtown well if business lunching returns. And then of course, there’s Paleta Planeta at Fourth and Santa Clara Streets and Jackie’s Place on S. First, opening later this month, testaments to the city’s rich tapestry.

Takeaway: Think Big on a Small Scale & Bet on Locals

The Leadership Crises

With the downtown economy still reeling from the shocks of the past decade, it is now undergoing a leadership crisis. District 3 elected Omar Torres 2022 and even before his short tenure was sidelined by a criminal scandal two years later, he had struggled to take leadership on downtown issues. An election is underway to replace him, with a runoff between labor-endorsed Gabby Chavez-Lopez and Mayor Mahan-backed Matthew Quevedo.

Nanci Klein, director of San Jose’s Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs, is retiring, and the transition is underway at the key agency overseeing both the arts and development activity in the city.

The Chamber of Commerce was hobbled in late 2020 by community reaction to a racist campaign post and lost both membership and its ability to promote business-friendly candidates. Last year Leah Toeniskoetter was brought in as CEO and has begun rebuilding the venerable institution. 

The biggest shock came with Friday’s unexpected announcement: the resignation of Alex Stettinski, CEO of the San Jose Downtown Association—the organization representing all of downtown’s businesses and property owners. His departure comes just two and a half years after he succeeded the longtime executive director that had led the SJDA for more than three decades.

Downtowners had hoped that Stettinski would bring fresh ideas and new energy to a recovering downtown and an organization that had become set in its ways. He proved passionate and moved quickly to reshape the organization and refresh its marketing, but his tenure was undermined by financial challenges, high staff turnover and a breakaway promotions group, Urban Vibrancy.

Downtown business owner Alan “Gumby” Marques has stepped in to fill the slot on an interim basis. A public relations agency has been hired to manage the narrative and Stettinski declined to comment on his resignation.

Falling Dominos in SoFA

One of downtown’s success stories is the SoFA District, a grassroots upstart district that defied city-sponsored redevelopment to create its own identity and become the valley’s coolest commercial district. Partly because of neglect—the former redevelopment agency concentrated its planning dollars elsewhere—it is one of the last collections of shoulder-to-shoulder one-story, century-old commercial buildings with timber bow truss roof structures.

The demolition of the brick Garden City Construction building to make way for The Fay and the deco-era Firestone dealership to give rise to The Pierce began the process of replacing SoFA’s history, at its south edge, with the modernism found throughout the valley these days.

The dominos will likely fall next with the destruction of broadcasting pioneer Charles Herrold’s school 493 S. First St., where a 15-story affordable housing building has been approved. The “Gateway Tower” is a textbook example of tax dollar waste as the biggest recipient of Measure A dollars, as the 220 units will cost $1 million each to build. Voters who voted to tax themselves almost a billion dollars in 2016 for a plan to address homelessness could never have imagined that one project would hoover up so much money and not get built for 13 years. If it’s completed in 2029, it will consume $82 million in from Santa Clara County, $38.5 from City of San Jose, $4 million from the state and $121 million in federal tax credits.

By reenvisioning the failed luxury housing highrise to provide permanent shelter for formerly unhoused individuals at a million a pop, Gateway will join other adjacent voucher-enabled housing and nearby support services. SoFA’s destiny as a concentrated social safety net begs the question of why the wise local housing gods picked some of the city’s most expensive real estate and construction methods to carry out the will of the people, more than a decade after they generously opened their checkbooks for Measure A.

Downtown Diary will be continued intermittently, online and in these pages. Metro editor Dan Pulcrano has been a part of the San Jose Downtown Association and the SoFA District since the beginning, and doesn’t pretend to be objective on these subjects.

Monday this week, April 7, 2025, marked the 50th anniversary of a landmark piece of occupational safety law, Cal-OSHA’s ban on the use of the short-handled hoe in agricultural work. The order followed a California Supreme Court ruling that declared it an “unsafe hand tool,” a more formal description of el brazo del diablo, “the devil’s arm,” which left farm workers with herniated discs and sciatica amongst related back and skeletal injuries.

Except for a March 29 Instagram post by Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo, the half-century of enlightened ergonomic law would have passed unnoticed. The California decision was one of César Chávez’s proudest accomplishments. He was photographed carrying El Cortito as a political prop.

San Jose artist Carlos Pérez used the short-handled tool to weed potato, peanut and sugar beets fields near Stockton, where he moved with his mother and brother from Mexico City in the early 1960s. “When my mom passed away, I found it in the house,” he says.

He keeps it in his Japantown studio as a reminder. “One of the things I remember, especially when I was doing sugar beets, is that I would lay down on the ditches on the road because my back was killing me. I was only 12 years old. This is hard soil. Every strike you make is a strike on your wrist and your elbow, and it goes up to your back. Especially the older men. They began to complain.”

“We’d jump on a bus at the Charter Way liquor store. We didn’t know where we were going to go or how much we were getting paid. ‘You’re going to get $2 an hour,’ they’d say. That was great. We didn’t have to get paid by the bucket to pick tomatoes.”

Two years ago, in April 2023, the San Jose City Council unanimously endorsed a proposal by councilmembers Domingo Candelas, Peter Ortiz and David Cohen to honor César Chávez with a commemorative public art piece in downtown San Jose’s Plaza de César Chávez.

As with many civic resolutions, good intentions often sit on a shelf, like the hoe in the labor leader’s office, preserved at the César E. Chávez National Monument in Keene, California. Perez would like to see Chávez honored by erecting an oversized version of El Cortito at Plaza de César Chávez.

A dramatic public art piece along the lines of San Francisco’s Cupid’s Span would, of course, be more iconic than another bronze bust. Perez’s rendering proposes an oversized reproduction of El Cortito with an apple balanced atop.

The fruit atop of the tool represents the birth of Silicon Valley on the region’s agricultural legacy. “This was a farming community at one time. California is the fifth largest economy in the world because of that…not just high tech, because of the products we prepare from the earth. Everybody eats.”

He knows both industries well. Perez spent years doing design work for IBM in Almaden Valley. His first job was with the Silicon Valley marketing company, Regis McKenna Inc., whose clients included the small personal computing startup Apple.

One of his early assignments was manually drafting the outlines of the Apple logo that became one of the world’s most recognizable symbols and the graphic representation of one of the world’s most valuable companies.

His early renderings of the proposed public sculpture display the apple atop the flat end of the hoe, and Perez plans to evolve the concept after receiving community feedback. “There’s still work to be done. We’re trying to get this germ of an idea out there so maybe it can become a reality.”

“An agricultural community was transformed into Silicon Valley, and that changed the world,” Pérez said. “I want to honor César Chávez and the workers here who laid the foundation for the greatest wealth creation event in the history of humanity. 

“We must recognize their contributions.”

Like many of us, I grew up hearing fears that workers would be replaced by robots, but that all seemed far away, and the scenario played out differently. Instead, American manufacturing moved to China, where low-wage workers work long hours to make our clothes and mobile phones.

As factory jobs declined, the service sector boomed, with a corresponding increase in warehouse, delivery and food preparation work. That sector is now changing too, and it looks like the robot future is making inroads.

In Cupertino, Kura Sushi sends dishes and beverages to tables on a robot. Roger Bar & Restaurant in Mountain View returns dirty plates to the kitchen with a similar system. I have run into security robots at the Westfield Valley Fair shopping center.

In San Francisco’s financial district last week, I spotted a Waymo vehicle waiting at the intersection, conspicuous by its spinning LiDAR dome and bug-eyed sensors. Since I’m from the provinces and curious, I leaned forward to see if there is a driver, or a passenger-side one that can take over in a pinch. Both front seats are empty. A door opens. A passenger jumps in. The Waymo takes a left.

The rolling robots and industrial-looking autonomous Jaguars will one day be primitive reminders of transitional technology, like a 24-pound Osborne portable computer in the early 1980s, an evolutionary link to today’s smartwatches.

Robotic arms have welded car body frames since the 1960s. On Tuesday, though, a showstopper came when an autonomous robot called “Blue,” developed by Nvidia and Disney, stepped on stage at the SAP Center—and I mean taking steps with legs that bend at the knee. Blue began interacting with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang as the CEO closed out his two-hour keynote, which packed the hockey arena to the rafters.

“The ChatGPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner,” Huang has said, which means that robots will no longer be paying occasional visits to our lives, but will rather become our everyday companions and emotional support bots, folding our clothes, preparing snacks and reading bedtime stories to the kids.

“We’ll have AI agents, which are part of our digital workforce,” Huang said during his San Jose speech. “There’s a billion knowledge workers in the world. They’re probably going to be 10 billion digital workers working with us side by side.”

Worker displacement fears may be mitigated, at least in this area, by the economic benefits that percolate around ground zero of a new technology initiative. In a video posted to Instagram by San Jose Mayor and shameless AI booster Matt Mahan, Nvidia vice president Greg Estes referred to “The Capital of Artificial Intelligence, San Jose, California.”

Jensen also gave the city where he started Nvidia a shoutout, “The only way to hold more people at GTC is we’re gonna have to grow San Jose. And we’re working on it. We got a lot of land to work with. We gotta grow San Jose.”

The statement could refer to Mahan’s hopes to expand the convention center and add hotel rooms in downtown San Jose. Or it could mean that Santa Clara-based Nvidia is looking to expand further in San Jose.  In December, Nvidia signed a lease for more than 100,000 square feet in North San Jose, according to published reports.

Downtown San Jose has several large parcels earmarked for office development, and projects such as the Google campus and Jay Paul Company’s huge City View Plaza redevelopment have not moved forward. The hints that the emergent artificial intelligence-robotics nexus are eyeing San Jose could be just what’s needed to reboot downtown.

Facilities at San Jose McEnery Convention Center and SAP Center were filled to capacity this week with an estimated 25,000 visitors, and some attendees were turned away. Restaurants were buzzing and nearby venues were rented out for private events. Nvidia fenced off Plaza de Cesar Chavez, added a stage and filled it with food trucks.

As a municipal economic development strategy, embracing a lead player in an exploding industry of the future makes perfect sense, and San Jose’s mayor, a former technology startup executive, has delivered the hug.

Countervailing forces are at work as well. As Huang honored scientists like the late astronomer Vera Rubin in his SAP Center remarks, an anti-science movement is dismantling climate change initiatives, public health policies and fossil fuel replacement strategies in Washington, D.C.

In Sacramento, Teamsters union leadership has lined up behind California Assembly Bill 33 to require human operators in autonomous vehicles used for deliveries. “The widespread deployment of AV delivery vehicles threatens to displace hundreds of thousands of hardworking Californians who rely on their good-paying jobs in the transportation and delivery sectors to support their families,” a Teamsters statement said.

The capital intensive requirements of investing in massive processing infrastructure will mean that the AI future will be scoped and owned by those with access to the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be spent. Benefits may be generally available but wealth will flow upwards. The computational power needed to create digital twins of virtually everything on earth will dwarf any comparable IT builds of the past, and consume record amounts of electricity, at some environmental cost.

As a society, we will have to navigate the tradeoffs, including the inverse relationship between technology dependence and personal competence. Spell checkers and point of sale systems are reasons why writers can’t spell and cashiers can’t add. Drivers, professional and otherwise, can no longer navigate streets without a GPS.

The same great technology that allows us to do so much can also make us dumber. Artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous vehicles will no doubt allow us to boost productivity and crack new challenges. The juggernaut is here.

After that, who will create the innovations to train the models? Will learning models train themselves and become more ingrown and self referential? Will the turbocharged tools of the future create our next Bowies and Basquiats, the paradigm busters that are the flagships of our humanity?

Jensen Huang’s March 18, 2025, remarks can be viewed at Investing.com and on YouTube.

Silicon Valley Pizza Week, organized by the Weeklys Media Group, of which Metro is a part, runs Jan. 29–Feb. 8. Also this week: pizza’s evolution from street food to haute cuisine, a history of Silicon Valley pizza companies and a list of Pizza Week participants. Visit SiliconValleyPizzaWeek.com for more, or download the Pizza Week App.

Several millennia of Indian gastronomy seemed to be assembling the ingredients for Indian pizza, but it took the Bay Area’s culture of innovation to hit the tipping point. Some of the fastest growing pizza operations these days are places like Parktown Pizza, known for its butter chicken pizza, and Indian fusion pizza champion Tandoori Pizza, with locations in Sunnyvale, Fremont and San Jose.

Wheat made its way from the fertile crescent to northern India around 4000 BCE, toward the end of the Neolithic period, when humans abandoned foraging for farming, and one of the world’s first urban civilizations took root in the Indus valley.

Round, flat wheat breads such as roti became popular at that time, as did paneer cheese. Later on, naan bread trended in the royal kitchens of the Persian-influenced Mughal emperors. The flat bread was fired at high temperatures in wood burning tandoor ovens, much like today’s Neapolitan delicacies.

The Portuguese brought tomatoes from the Americas to Italy and India in the 16th century. While all the basic ingredients were in place, the invention of Indian pizza didn’t occur until 1986, according to modern food historians.

The same beautiful Bay Area melting pot that gave us sushirritos, ramen burgers and Kamala Harris is responsible for this culinary fusion. Dalvinder “Tony” Multani, the owner of San Francisco’s Zante Pizza and Indian Cuisine in the Mission District of San Francisco, is widely credited with pioneering the Indian pizza.

After moving from India to New York City in 1986, Multani polished his pizza-making skills at Gloria Pizza in Queens before relocating to the West Coast.

The Bay Guardian took notice and the SF Weekly observed that “an old neighborhood pizzeria” had “started selling Indian food while still offering pizzas. … Continued suggestions by the clientele to combine the two resulted in the creation of Indian pizza—a classic crisp, thin crust layered with spinach as well as sauce, mozzarella” and toppings such as tandoori chicken, lamb, cauliflower and eggplant.

“North Indian cooking and straightforward New York-style pizzas were served side-by-side, divided by an invisible firewall,” the Chronicle’s Soleil Ho wrote in 2022. “But like two star-crossed lovers that find themselves alone in some silent garden, the curries and pizzas quickly became entwined. And thus, local culinary history was made.”

Over the decades, Indian pizza has grown from a local curiosity to an established phenomenon, celebrated in cities around the nation with Indian American populations. In Texas, where barbecue reigns, Indian pizzas topped with smoked meats and tangy chutneys became a regional specialty.

The fusion attracted international attention in 2010 when it appeared on the Cooking Network show United Tastes of America, Multani told Vice in 2017.

Fremont and Berkeley became hubs for Indian pizza, thanks to their large Indian-American populations. Gursewak Gill first opened Bombay Pizza House in Union City in 2012. He took on a partner, rebranded and two years later opened Curry Pizza House in Fremont.

Curry Pizza House brought unique twists, such as the signature Curry Chicken Masala Pizza, prepared with curry sauce, bell peppers, red onions, cilantro and diced masala chicken. Their Butter Chicken Pizza combined shahi sauce, diced tomatoes, red onions and diced butter chicken. The Palak Paneer Pizza incorporates homemade pesto, cheese, spinach, red onions, masala paneer, green chilies, ginger and garlic.

The nascent chain expanded throughout the Bay Area and now has two locations in Fremont and three in San Jose, as well as outposts in Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Milpitas, Palo Alto, Redwood City and San Mateo. As of 2023, Curry Pizza House had 17 locations across California, Nevada and Texas.

On the Peninsula, cities like Palo Alto and Mountain View saw the rise of Indian pizza as part of the region’s adventurous food culture. With the influx of tech workers from India, the demand for Indian-inspired comfort foods soared. Restaurants began offering Indian pizzas alongside more traditional fare, catering to both Indian-American families and foodies seeking something innovative. The combination of authentic Indian flavors with the familiar pizza format became an instant hit.

In the South Bay, where cities like San Jose and Santa Clara boast significant Indian populations, Indian pizza became a culinary mainstay. Family-run establishments and chains like Tikka Masala Pizza expanded their presence, offering creative variations such as goat curry pizza, mango chutney pizza, and spicy vindaloo pizzas. The South Bay’s tech-driven, multicultural community embraced these offerings, helping Indian pizza become a defining part of the local food scene.

Silicon Valley Pizza Week, organized by the Weeklys Media Group, of which Metro is a part, runs Jan. 29–Feb. 8. Also this week: pizza’s evolution from street food to haute cuisine, a taste of Indian pizza and a list of Pizza Week participants. Visit SiliconValleyPizzaWeek.com for more, or download the Pizza Week App.

Silicon Valley has a history of innovation and business success, and that tradition extends to the humble art of making pizza. A number of legendary pizza companies sprang forth from these parts and the region’s history is intertwined with the pies that have fueled the valley’s technical work force. 

Among the celebrated brands to emerge from this region are Pizza Time Theater, Round Table Pizza and Mountain Mike’s Pizza. Regional chain Pizza My Heart has experienced significant growth while staying close to its roots.

Mountain View start-up Zume launched in 2015 with the goal of automating pizza delivery and production. The robotic operation burned through $445 million, including $375 million from a 2018 Softbank investment, before shutting down in 2023.

While pizza made by robots is not really a thing yet, pizza made by hand continues to win the day. A wave of boutique, artisanal establishments, such as Mountain View’s Doppio Zero and Pizza Bocca Lupo in San Pedro Square, have brought Naples-style pizza to the region. The fusion of old world cuisine with California’s agricultural bounty has always proved a winning combination, and stoking flames with long-handled tools may just be all the technology we need.

Round Table Pizza

Round Table Pizza was founded by William Larson, who was born in San Jose and raised in Palo Alto. After serving four years in the U.S. Navy and working various jobs, Larson opened his first pizza parlor on Dec. 21, 1959, at 1235 El Camino Real in Menlo Park. He named the restaurant Round Table Pizza, inspired by the round redwood tables that he and his father built for the establishment.

A few years later, the business relocated to 1225 El Camino Real, where it remains to this day. The Menlo Park restaurant is now owned and operated by Bob Larson, William’s son, continuing the family tradition. Today, Round Table Pizza operates more than 410 locations across the western United States.

Mountain Mike’s Pizza

The first Mountain Mike’s Pizza was opened in 1978 by Thomas Van Buskirk in Palo Alto. Over the years, the brand expanded from a single pizzeria into a robust franchise. In 2017, the company was acquired by Chris Britt and Ed St. Geme, ushering in a period of accelerated growth.

Under CEO Jim Metevier, Mountain Mike’s saw remarkable success, with a 32% increase in store sales over a five-year period, according to a 2024 press release. The franchise now boasts nearly 300 locations across the western United States. Its top-performing stores reported impressive revenues, with the top 10% earning $1.8 million annually and the top 25% averaging $1.6 million.

Pizza My Heart

Pizza My Heart was founded in 1981 in Capitola as a small beachside pizzeria. Known for its casual surfer vibe and signature pizza-by-the-slice, the brand quickly gained popularity among locals, visitors and college students in Santa Cruz County.

Meanwhile Chuck Hammers had established Pizza-a-Go-Go in downtown San Jose in the mid 1980s. The contemporary pizzeria was known for its hearty, East Coast-style pizza. In 1997, Hammers acquired Pizza My Heart and rebranded his Pizza-a-Go-Go locations with the PMH name. Hammers grew the brand while staying true to its surf theme and laid-back roots, and the company expanded significantly, emphasizing creative offerings and its now-iconic Pizza My Heart T-shirts.

Today, Pizza My Heart operates more than 25 locations across the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Coast and was voted Best of Silicon Valley in the most recent Metro Silicon Valley readers’ poll.

Pizza Time Theater

In May 1977, Pizza Time Theater opened its doors in San Jose. The concept was the brainchild of Nolan Bushnell, the legendary video game inventor and CEO of Atari. Originally part of Atari, Pizza Time Theater combined family dining with cutting-edge entertainment, featuring animatronic characters. The star of the show was Chuck E. Cheese, a giant, cigar-smoking rat with a bowler hat, buck teeth and a New Jersey accent.

The venues also included video game arcades, which quickly became a major draw. Pizza Time Theater gained rapid popularity, and when the Sunnyvale-based company went public in 1981, its stock soared. Despite ownership changes and ups and downs over nearly half a century, Chuck E. Cheese remains a beloved brand with more than 600 locations worldwide, including in the United States, Canada, Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.

A Slice of New York

A Slice of New York was founded in 2006 by Kirk Vartan and Marguerite Lee, bringing New York-style pizza to the South Bay. Inspired by their roots in New York, the founders sought to recreate the flavors and atmosphere of an East Coast pizzeria, offering everything from foldable slices to hearty calzones. The flagship store opened on Stevens Creek Boulevard in San Jose and a second location opened in Sunnyvale in 2011.

In 2017, A Slice of New York made history by transitioning to an employee-owned cooperative model. Under this model, staff members became co-owners of the business, sharing both profits and responsibilities. Today, A Slice of New York is recognized not only for its pizza but also as a pioneering example of how businesses can thrive while prioritizing fairness, transparency and collaboration.

Tony & Alba’s

Tony & Alba’s Pizza and Pasta was established in June 1982 by Tony and Alba Salciccia in Mountain View. The couple took over an existing pizzeria, starting with just a brick oven and a few tables. Their dedication to authentic Italian recipes and community engagement quickly garnered a loyal customer base, leading to significant expansion. At its peak, Tony & Alba’s operated multiple locations across the Bay Area and employed nearly 200 people.

In the early 1990s, Tony & Alba’s became a pioneer in online food ordering. Employees at Sun Microsystems developed a system that allowed them to place orders directly from their workstations, making Tony & Alba’s one of the first pizzerias to receive online orders.

Today, the original Mountain View location has closed, but the legacy continues with a restaurant on Stevens Creek Boulevard in San Jose, operated by daughter Diana and her husband, Al Vallorz.

Tony Gemignani

Pizza chef and restaurateur Tony Gemignani grew up in Fremont back when it was carpeted with apricot and cherry orchards. Gemignani spent time in his youth working on his grandfather’s farm, which cultivated a variety of produce. As farmland gave way to housing during Silicon Valley’s technology boom, Gemignani left Fremont in his twenties and began building a pizza empire. In 2007 he won the title of World Champion Pizza Maker at the World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy, becoming the first American to win the title. The 13-time world pizza champion established a network of restaurants, including Slice House, a fast-casual pizza franchise. The fast-expanding chain has 28 locations, in addition to outposts at casinos and stadiums, with plans to add at least 100 more.