The Garden Theatre (minus anything to do with theatre) is having a celebration of sorts on May 30th, to celebrate the newly restored animated marquee. They are even having a priest (I believe he’s a priest, anyway—but they call him “Rev.” in the article. Are priests called “Reverends”?) bless the thing. I think, instead, he should pray for a miracle: it would be nice if the place was actually a real theatre and, barring that (since I know that won’t ever happen since they’ve gutted and remodeled it twice since it was a theatre) perhaps they could change the abominable color choices someone made. It really looks awful with the purple they’ve chosen to “blend” with orange and yellow. This picture at a Willow Glen blog doesn’t quite do it the (in)justice it deserves, but it really does look bad. My stylish children have seen it and agree. Then, to add insult to injury, Starbucks is moving in, so we’ll add their dark green to the mix. (And we’ll add their second store to Willow Glen … of course this one is right across the street from Peet’s Coffee & Tea, while the other is across the street from Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company. Now doesn’t that just surprise you like nothing else? Or not.)
Mayor for San Jose?
I still don’t know who I’ll vote for for mayor. Chavez is too close to Gonzales (our current crook mayor, and she voted for the 4 million dollar subsidy for the car race we’ll have this summer, so she’s off my list. Reed I’m not at all familiar with, although he wants to restore pride to San Jose and I’m not sure if he’s aware that we’ve really never had much city pride here. Dave Cortese seems popular around here, but I don’t usually care about popular. The Mercury News endorsed Pandor for whatever that’s worth. Mulcahy is new to politics, and he’s been involved in the arts (Children’s Musical Theatre) so he has that on his side. He also, though, is partially responsible for the whole Garden Theatre remodel. Hmmm. How can I vote for a person with such bad taste!? :-)
I guess I’ll have to read up on these folks more. Seems like they all say pretty much the same thing, which is a whole lotta nothing and a bunch of stuff that doesn’t offend anyone. Where do they stand on the arts in San Jose? What do they think about the whole ballpark issue? How did those who are currently on the city council vote on that whole auditorium issue that was competing with Santa Clara County’s decision to build a big auditorium? (And why the heck do we need another auditorium when we have the Shark Tank and a CPA barn we can’t seem to fill?)
I didn’t realize we were sued, and we sued, the county. We lost, folks. Read this:
12:36 p.m. April 11, 2006
SAN JOSE – The city agreed to pay at least $36.5 million to Santa Clara County for a new crime lab and freeway improvements to settle a two-year legal battle over a delayed concert hall.
County supervisors approved the settlement in a closed session Monday. It resolves a pair of lawsuits over a proposed 7,000-seat venue at the county fairgrounds and development in north San Jose.
San Jose sued to block the concert hall in August 2004, arguing it needed to approve the project.
The county countersued, demanding $40 million for delays to the project and other land-use disputes.
In February, a San Mateo County Superior Court judge threw out San Jose’s suit and ruled the county could take most of its claims to trial.
Lawyers for both sides said the deal will benefit both sides, though the county is considering scrapping the concert hall because litigation increased the cost by about 25 percent to $83 million.
“It was going to take something significant to get both sides to bury the hatchet and cooperate on community projects, and move on,” said San Jose City Attorney Rick Doyle.
Under the agreement, the city will pay $22.5 million over the next three years toward the new county crime laboratory and seismic upgrades for courts and a hospital.
The city will also pay $11 million by 2010 for improvements to the county’s Montague Expressway and at least $3 million toward other roadway upgrades.
San Jose agreed to annex some pockets of county land within city limits by 2011. The county wanted to avoid providing high-cost services to the scattered neighborhoods.
So there you go. We lose that. We pay 4 million for a race. The mayor did some shady stuff with a garbage company. He did shady stuff with other folks. Ah yes. I love those politicians! And NOW I have to figure out who to vote for? Sigh.
I will be glad, though, to have anyone new. We certainly can’t do worse than we’ve done. I hope.
But enough of that. I’m not usually one to rant about politics; I stay out of that stuff as much as possible. (I am going to listen to this podcast though, to hear what the five have to say, and then I’ll visit the other podcasts at that site. How cool to find this site! This may be the way I’ll make my choice.
Today is Memorial Day. I confess I don’t do much about a day like today; I don’t have any close connections to people who fought in wars. I’m opposed to our current war, and have opposed others in our recent past. So for now Memorial Day is just a very sad day, in that I think that those who have and are dying in our current war are dying due to a President’s poor choices. (Please note I’m not angry at them as they do what they trained and promised to do. It’s the Pres that ticks me off.)
I slept in. Jameson slept in longer. I think we are both recovering from the final night of Cats. Jameson has more reason than I, actually; he cleaned up while I yakked and then he spent the night at a friend’s and I’m sure got very little sleep. But heck, I think, being nearly 50, I get to take longer to recover from a run of a show. Don’t you? It sounds like Jameson will be going out with friends. Or at least one friend, Megan. (Yeah. Megan.) I’m planning on a baseball day, with maybe a Memorial Day show or two thrown in if they look like they are any good.
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