A brand-new, spacious $90 million police substation sits empty and unused in south San Jose. It’s one of five publicly funded buildings—built at a cost of more than $130 million—which were set to open in the last 15 months yet remain vacant due to budget woes.
Lifestyle News - page 31
Village Falafel has one of those nondescript names that reveal nothing about the cultural origin of the cuisine. The key to Village Falafel’s identity can be found tucked away in much smaller font on the sign outside its (also rather nondescript) location in Cupertino: “Armenian and Mediterranean Cuisine.”
It wasn’t so long ago when finding a good cup of coffee in San Jose was a challenge. Those days are over as cafes serving good coffee abound. Here are places that brew it right.
Some of the most exquisite new cars, trucks, hybrids and more roll into downtown San Jose for 2012 Silicon Valley International Auto Show.
In its nearly 100 years of existence, the Gaslighter Theater in Campbell has gone from holding sharecropper’s cash as a bank in the 1920s and showing movies during World War II to being a small-stage theater for vaudeville acts and an all-ages rock venue as recently as 2006. At that time, the white marble landmark, with thick columns bracketing the entrance, was closed temporarily so it could be refashioned as a lounge. Five and a half years later, the Gaslighter remains dark. But there’s hope the theater could be resurrected in coming months if it can overcome the kind of obstacles that frequently crop up in small town development battles.
Good ideas can come from anywhere. Even 6-year-old girls. Mountain View resident Liz Snyder was enjoying a visit to the park with her daughter, Helen Liles. A popsicle vendor walked by, and Helen pleaded for a treat. Snyder said no because of the artificial and highly processed ingredients found in popsicles and ice cream. “I gave her a lecture for the umpteenth time,” she recalls.
With the benefit of hindsight and digestion, here are some of the best things I ate in the year that was.
Scrambled or fried? Hashbrowns or home fries? Wheat or white? Important decisions await you at breakfast. Here are five restaurants that will get your day started right.
A drink and a drag off a cigarette were once a classic fixture of American nightlife. But in the mid-‘90s, new laws made smoking illegal in California bars and other public places, and to light up a cigarette meant placing a coaster on a pint and stepping out the door. Increasingly, cities around the Bay Area now are considering taking the law much further than that. Multiple municipalities in the South Bay are putting forth proposals to make smoking in public and, in some cases, inside one’s home, illegal.
The bar is really more of a lounge. There are no bar stools yet, just a pair of comfy gray chenille couches between the bar and the reception desk. Additional seating will come next year, as well as a small menu. But the drinks are sublime.
