Archive for the ‘Main Street’ Category

The People before El Camino

Saturday, November 27th, 2010

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I’ve already told you that I participated in Day One of the Shellmound Peace Walk on November 17, 2010, and pointed you to the article I wrote for Milpitas Patch. Here’s why I walked.

The Ohlone Indians lived around the Bay for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. The Spanish missionaries arrived in the 17th century and once they baptized Indians, the missionaries treated them as property of Spain. They were confined to the mission compounds and forcibly brought back if they tried to escape. Revolts were answered by lethal retaliation. Physically they were worn down by imposed labor and sickened and killed by unfamiliar diseases. The old and the very young were particularly susceptible. There are reports of abuse of every nature. Their culture was erased.

When the mission era ended and California became an American state, the Indians were set free but their homes and way of life were gone. They suffered horrible persecution at the hands of Americans, from denial of civil rights to murder. Some went underground, pretending to be Mexican just to get by.

The Native Americans did what mankind does. They adapted and they survived. They kept their spiritual roots intact, never forgetting their languages, their songs, their medicines, and their values. In the 1960s and ’70s they reclaimed their identity, shouldered their history, and politically activated. They’re making tremendous strides but many still carry the social scars from the trauma they suffered starting with Spanish contact.

Meanwhile after reaping the benefits of the Gold Rush, agriculture, and the Industrial Revolution, Americans in California started to rediscover the state’s Spanish past. In 1884 Helen Hunt Jackson published her novel Ramona which romanticized the mission era and sparked a new expression of California identity: a western paradise on the Pacific coast infused with Mexican charm. The crumbling missions were literally revived and rebuilt and became cornerstones of communities and tourist draws. El Camino Real was reinvented as a continuous highway from San Diego to San Francisco. Most recently I caught the bug and climbed on board the nostalgia train. I celebrate El Camino, what it is today and what I think it will be. But I have to face its past, and that includes the pain of the Ohlone.

That’s why I went on the Shellmound Peace Walk, to experience the history firsthand. “El Camino” means “the road,” and a road is one of the fundamental ways a people leave their mark on the Earth. Walking a road means following the footsteps of those who went before. Where a bit of nature remained—the Alviso slough, Coyote Creek, the Diablo Mountain Range—I could see what earlier people saw and immerse myself in the immutable sense of place. The physical exertion of walking reminded me of my universal humanity, and sharpened my motivations as I reflected on the multitude of emotions that preceded me there: hope, fear, elation, sorrow. Walking with Indians, some of them descendants of Ohlones, was a gift. Talking with them connected me directly to the people of this land not just through earth, but through flesh, blood, and spirit. Walking with non-Indians bolstered my faith in friendship and fraternity. Injustice shared is peace conceived.

I will continue to celebrate El Camino Real. It has a story to tell and I will continue to listen and share what I hear. El Camino remembers the Ohlone. So do we all.

Pounding Pavement for Peace on Patch

Friday, November 19th, 2010

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So let me tell you about my Wednesday. I participated in the Shellmound Peace Walk, a ten-day walking tour around the Bay Area of sites  sacred to the Ohlone Indians. I walked the first day, from Alviso Marina, through Milpitas, all the way to Fremont: ten miles. On the way I tweeted to Adelaide Chen of Milpitas Patch, a hyperlocal news site, that we were coming through town. She actually came out and met us in San Jose and talked me into writing an article and providing photos for the site! So here it is, my journalistic debut. I will follow up soon with a more personal account of my experience and the great people I met. I have tons to talk about.


Native Americans Visit Elmwood to Remember Burial Site (in Milpitas Patch)

A group promoting awareness of ancestral burial sites walked from Alviso to Fremont on the first day of the Peace Walk.

By Bill Moore

(that’s me!)
Read more >


Ridin’ on the Green Line

Saturday, November 13th, 2010

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Early November I started noticing something new on my street: Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s Route 66 is now being serviced by shiny new hybrid buses. They’re hard to miss with eye-catching “Hybrid” labels on the sides, a reworked VTA logo with a new green swoosh around it, and a big boxy hump on the roof.

I went to VTA’s web site to check them out and learned that VTA is purchasing a “fleet of 90 American-made, low-emission diesel electric hybrid buses.” The cool thing is they used federal stimulus money as well as California Prop 1B funds to buy buses that are built by a company nearby in Hayward, creating and preserving green jobs here in the Bay Area: your tax dollars at work. The new buses are 90 percent cleaner and emit 15 percent less greenhouse gas than the nineties-era all-combustion coaches they replace.

I love that Route 66 is the first to get these new buses. This route is the historic “El Camino de San Jose”  bus line, coming up through San Jose on Monterey Road from the south, continuing onto First Street through downtown, then cutting over to Oakland Road and Main Street in Milpitas. After a few twists it terminates at Dixon Landing and North Milpitas Boulevard, at the county line. This bus was the first one I took on both my epic bus trips up and down El Camino Real.

CIMG0680All the new hybrid buses I had seen were similar to the old diesel-only ones—white paint jobs with blue and red stripes down the side. Earlier this week though I was driving on Oakland Road and I saw something completely different: a hybrid bus with a brand new colorful full-body wrap! It was gorgeous, depicting a blue sky, a field of golden poppies, and native California wildlife. I desperately wanted to take a picture of it so I rashly made the decision to “follow that bus!” How hard could that be? It’s a bus that stops, right? It turns out I’m really bad at trying to front-tail a bus. I raced ahead of it (obeying all speed and traffic laws, of course) and pulled over to snap a shot of it, but I kept messing up the timing.CIMG0653 At one point I pulled way ahead of the bus into a parking lot and parked…behind a hedge. D’oh! After a couple more botched attempts I decided to go for the sure thing. I got behind it and followed it to the Great Mall where I know it waits for several minutes. Brilliant. Then I was separated from it by a red light. C’mon! C’mon! When I got to the mall it was still there. Awesome. Park, get out of the car, and bam, off it goes again. Augh!!! Back in the car, I tried to catch it at the Milpitas Library but failed to find a good ambush spot. Vroom, it’s gone. Sunnyvale biscuit! I’m no quitter. Undeterred I pulled ahead, determined to find a good spot, but I had a problem. I didn’t know the route past the library, and I didn’t have time to pull up the map on my smartphone. I literally had to sniff out the route, hopping from bus stop to bus stop. I felt like a caveman tracking a woolly mammoth (with fewer emissions). I lucked out and guessed correctly that it turns off Jacklin onto Escuela. I tried to trap it at the end of Escuela but again it eluded me because I couldn’t park close enough. By then I was literally shaking with frustration at the absurdity of it all so I just followed it until it finally came to rest at the end of the line. I parked in the Sunnyhills Apartment complex of all places. I had all the time in the world so I got my shots. Victory. I have no idea what the driver on break thought of the crazy guy stalking him from San Jose and taking tons of pictures of his bus, so I simply told him I was admiring the new paint job, and he understood that.

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I should mention that going southbound, Route 66 goes to South San Jose all the way to Santa Teresa and terminates at Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center. The street it turns onto to get to the hospital is Camino Verde. “Green Road.” Kinda perfect.

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El Camino Calendar

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

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I’m still trying to catch my breath from the crazy start to this week. Halloween! Giants! Election! Oh my! Take it down a notch and relax at some of these upcoming El Camino events this weekend. As always, be sure to check out the El Camino Calendars page for a list of venues which always have a variety of activities going on.

Tragically somehow I accidentally deleted my “El Scare-Mino Skull-endar” posting from last week, which listed a bunch of Halloween events. C’est la vie. In the future I’ll be more careful.


South FIRST FRIDAYS Art Walk

November 5, 2010

JOIN US for the next South FIRST FRIDAYS art walk on NOV 5th!
8pm ’til LATE — ART WALK venues are free and open to the public
SoFA District (So. First Street between San Carlos and E. Reed streets)
San Jose
http://www.southfirstfridays.com/


Modern Primitive Cocktail Society and Tiki Art Show

Friday, November 5 · 8:00pm – 11:00pm
SLG Art Boutiki
577 S. Market Street
San Jose, CA

The SLG Art Boutiki and Gallery, home of Club Tiki Press publishers of the famed Beachbum Berry Tiki Drink books, celebrates November with a Tiki art show celebrating, well, tiki’s and our love for them.

Live music and all of the normal South First Friday Art Boutiki good times.

Event on Facebook
http://www.artboutiki.com/


ArtRage

Thursday, November 4 · 6:00pm – 9:00pm
San Jose Museum of Art
110 S Market St.
San Jose, CA

Hang with friends (and meet new ones) at ArtRage. Do some in-person social networking! Admission $5.

Local neo-soul/funk/hip hop favorites “So Timeless” will get you moving.
Catch the “Glow Show” by Nocturnal Sunshine
Capture the ArtRage with your friends in the (free) photobooth
Ride Rebar’s “Juicecycle” and juice local fruit for your cocktail
DIY Art: make an LED light sculpture

http://www.sanjosemuseumofart.org/event/art-rage-0


Bay Area Dine Out for Meals on Wheels

Join Meals on Wheels organizations from seven Bay Area counties and fabulous partner restaurants throughout your community for the first annual Bay Area Dine Out for Meals on Wheels on November 9, 2010. Combined, these Meals on Wheels organizations provide nearly 3 million meals each year to over 8,500 local seniors in our communities in need of a hot, nutritious meal and companionship each day.
Multiple locations!
Celia’s Mexican Restaurant | 3740 El Camino Real | Palo Alto
Hobee’s California Restaurants | 4224 El Camino Real | Palo Alto
China Stix Restaurant | 2110 El Camino Real | Santa Clara
Country Inn Cafe | 2008 El Camino Real | Santa Clara
La Paloma Restaurant | 2280 El Camino Real | Santa Clara
Mountain Mike’s Pizza | 390 El Camino Real | Belmont
The American Bull Bar & Grill | 1819 El Camino Real | Burlingame
British Bankers Club | 1090 El Camino Real | Menlo Park
Cedro Ristorante Italiano | 1010 El Camino Real #140 | Menlo Park
Celia’s Mexican Restaurant | 1850 El Camino Real | Menlo Park
Oak City Bar and Grill | 1029 El Camino Real | Menlo Park
Round Table Pizza | 1225 El Camino Real | Menlo Park
Chantilly Restaurant | 3001 El Camino Real | Redwood City
John Bentley’s Restaurant | 2915 El Camino Real | Redwood City
Max’s of Redwood City | 1001 El Camino Real | Redwood City
Celia’s Mexican Restaurant | 201 El Camino Real | San Bruno

http://www.dineoutnow.org/


Sunnyvale Art Gallery

“Two Man Show”

Hsing-Yao Tseng & Albert Ramos
Opening Reception:
Sat, November 6
2:00-5:00 PM

People’s Photo Contest

Reception:
Sat, November 6
7:00-9:30 PM

Sunnyvale Art Gallery
251 W El Camino Real
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
http://sunnyvaleartgallery.com/events.html


Bobbi Brown

Meet Bobbi Brown, the world’s most celebrated makeup artist and bestselling author.
Thursday, November 4th
5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Stanford Bookstore, Textbook Level
Give her 5 minutes. She’ll show you how to break some rules.
Come meet Bobbi Brown, who will be at the Stanford Bookstore to sign her new book, Beauty Rules.
Stanford Bookstore


Annual Holiday Open House

Ah Sam Florist
Celebrating 77 years serving our community.
Come join us for our annual holiday open house

November 5th – 7th
Friday: 6:30 – 9 pm
Saturday: 9 am – 6 pm
Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm

2645 S. El Camino Real
San Mateo, CA 94403
http://www.ahsam.com/


3rd Annual Children’s Talent Show

Saturday, November 6 · 2:00pm – 4:00pm
The Shops at Tanforan, Lower level in front of Old Navy

Children will compete and perform for a chance to win mall gift cards. First place will receive a $150 mall gift card! Come and support these talented rising stars!

To participate in the talent show, visit the mall management office or call 650 392 1631 to request an application. The application deadline is November 4th.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=156362661069720
http://www.theshopsattanforan.com/


Simon GamePlay

The Ultimate Gaming Experience!
Get your hands on the hottest games and more.
Be the first of your friends to play some of the most talked about unreleased games.

Great Mall
Sat, November 6, 10 AM – 9 PM
Neiman Marcus Last Call Court
447 Great Mall Drive
Milpitas, CA 95035
http://www.simon.com/mall/?id=1250


Diwali Gala Buffet

Vedas Indian Restaurant Presents the Diwali Gala Buffet
Nov. 5, 6, 7
Come Celebrate the Light
Handmade Sweets by Chef Kumar
560 N. Abel St., Milpitas
http://www.vedasrestaurant.com/


El Camino Calendar

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Pumpkin Pyramid

More great events coming up this weekend are listed below in geographical order. Be sure to check out my El Camino Calendars page for a list of venues which always have a variety of activities going on.


20th Annual Giant Pumpkin Weigh Off

Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park
14485 Monterey Rd. • Morgan Hill, CA 95037

SATURDAY, OCT. 9, 2010 at 1:00PM
awards immediately following
CHECK IN: 9:00am-11:00am
http://www.uesugifarms.com/


World Zombie Day Movie Night

Sunday, October 10 · 6:00pm – 9:00pm
SLG Art Boutiki & South First Street Billiards

World Zombie Day is the day that all undead across the world join together as one to help fight world hunger. Almost every city that has ever hosted a zombie walk will be joining together on October 10 to shamble along for world hunger.

Zombie-o-rama central are going to put our own unique spin on things, so we will be having a World Zombie Movie Night. Get in your favorite zombie attire and come by South First Street Billiards for an early evening of dinner, drinks and pool. The shamble on over to the SLG Art Boutiki for a zombie movie screening.

No make-up required, just bring yourself and a canned food item which we will donate to a local food bank.

What better way to spend 10.10.10

South First Billiards is at 420 South 1st St, SoFA District, San Jose, CA 95113.
The SLG Art Boutiki & Gallery is located at 577 S. Market Street, San Jose CA 95113.

Facebook | World Zombie Day Movie Night


Downtown San Jose Zombie Crawl

Thursday, Oct. 7th, 2010

Dress in your zombie finest and get killer drink specials with the purchase of a $3 VIP wristband

8-9pm- O’Flaherty’s, 25 N. San Pedro Street, San Jose CA 95110
9-10pm- Old Wagon Saloon, 73 N San Pedro St. San Jose, CA 95110
10-11pm- Dive Bar, 78 E Santa Clara St, San Jose, CA 95113-1804
11-12am- Voodoo, 14 S 2nd St, San Jose, CA 95113-2501
12-1am- Johnny V’s, 31 E Santa Clara st, San Jose, CA 95113

$500 Costume Contest
Facebook | 2nd Annual Downtown San Jose Zombie Crawl


Silly Bandz Pizza Party

Create It! Ceramics and Mosaic Studio
Town and Country Village
855 El Camino Real, Suite 108, Palo Alto, CA
6:00 to 8:00 pm, Friday, October 8, 2010
$36/child & includes all of the SILLYNESS you can handle!

Your kid(s) will love our special silly bandz pizza party! We are going to press the Silly Bandz as a technique to paint with to a silly bandz jar, play silly bingo games, win silly prizes, eat silly pizzas and drink silly juices!
http://www.createitceramics.com/


3 Minute Game Show

Great Mall
447 Great Mall Drive
Milpitas, CA 95035

The Great Mall is hosting Disney Channel’s “3 Minute Game Show” this Sunday, October 10, 2010. Bring the kids down and join us from 1 PM – 3 PM at entrance 2 court. Children from the audience will be chosen to participate in games and given a chance to win prizes!
http://www.greatmallbayarea.com/


Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration!

10/8/2010
Join The Shops at Tanforan and La Kalle 105.7 to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month via an exciting display of cultural dance performances. We hope you can join us!

Also enter to win a $500 mall gift card; must be present to win.

LOCATION: Lower Level, in front of Old Navy

TIME: 5:30 – 7:30 pm
The Shops at Tanforan | 1150 El Camino Real | San Bruno, California 94066
http://www.theshopsattanforan.com/


Old Counting Road

Monday, September 20th, 2010

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Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging. As I completed my reverse bus trip down El Camino Real earlier this month I tallied many chain stores like fast food restaurants and grocery stores as well as other categories like gas stations and bike shops. I also kept track of every El Camino Real bell. I tallied everything on the southbound trip, but I didn’t count them until now. Here are the totals for both the southbound trip and the northbound trip last November. I got some nice results.

Name

East Bay East

Peninsula East

Peninsula West

Peninsula Total

Gas Station 4 24 23 47
El Camino Bell 1 25 18 43
Subway 2 5 8 13
Taco Bell 2 7 4 11
Jack in the Box 0 7 3 10
McDonald’s 3 1 9 10
Safeway 2 5 4 9
Blockbuster 0 7 1 8
Kragen 0 5 3 8
Burger King 1 5 2 7
KFC 0 5 2 7
Bicycle shop* 0 5 1 6
Lucky 0 4 2 6
Carl’s Jr. 0 2 2 4
Togo’s 0 2 2 4
In-n-Out Burger 0 0 2 2
The Off Ramp 0 2 0 2
Wendy’s 0 0 2 2
Midas* 0 0 1 1

* Under-counted due  to inconsistent counting between trips

On every leg of the trip I only looked out the windows on the right side of the bus so I only saw one side of the road. The East Bay East column counts the businesses I passed heading north from San Jose to the Fremont BART station. It’s a short trip so the counts are low. I only made the trip in one direction so I only counted the east side of the road; I don’t have counts for the west side of the road at this time. The Peninsula East and West columns are for the long rides between San Jose and San Francisco. On the northbound trip I looked at the east side of the road, and southbound I looked west. The Peninsula Totals column is just that and does not include the East Bay counts. The main anomalies are bicycle shops and Midases because I didn’t count them consistently between the two trips so I know they are underrepresented in my table.

CIMG0229 I’m delighted to see that bells are pretty much at the top of the list, outnumbered only by conglomerated gas stations regardless of brand.  The original vision of the bell marker project in 1906 was to place them one mile apart on El Camino Real. It’s a 50-mile trip from San Jose to San Francisco and I counted 43 bells. There’s room for plenty more since I only saw one bell in San Francisco. It’s amazing how faithful Caltrans and the California Federation of Women’s Clubs have been to that original vision.

In the food department I’m surprised to see Subway at the top of the list with 13 stores though I shouldn’t be since they really do seem to be everywhere. I remarked on the northbound trip how there were 7 Taco Bells but only 1 McDonald’s. The southbound trip equalized the disparity with 4 Taco Bells but a whopping 9 McDonald’ses. Taco Bell still edges out McDonald’s with a total of 11 to 10, but that’s within the margin of error. The weird thing is how Taco Bell dominates the east side and McDonald’s dominates the west. The bell and the arch; the perfect symbols for the modern mission road.

My picks for which businesses to count were arbitrary.  I don’t know why I didn’t count Starbucks; I regret the omission. On the southbound trip I wished I had been counting Walgreens and CVS drugstores because I saw a lot of them. Another unusually frequent chain was Holiday Inn Express. I think I saw half a dozen on the southbound trip alone. Car washes, car dealerships, hotels, and banks would also have been interesting to count.

The purpose of this is to embrace the vast stretches of El Camino which are zoned as commercial strip and celebrate the beauty in their homogeneity. They are home to pretty much every national and regional brand I can think of. Even so all these chain stores combined are a drop in the bucket. El Camino as I saw it is made up primarily of small businesses of every description from mom & pop dry cleaners to favorite local chain eateries. There are also homes, schools, municipal buildings, and open space. I can try to reduce this Royal Road to simple numbers, but the whole will always be greater than a count of its parts.

Around the Bay in a Day

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

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Last November I took a bus ride up El Camino Real from San Jose to San Francisco and blogged my impressions and observations. To avoid giving myself whiplash, that day I only looked out the right side of the bus at the eastern side of the street and doggedly ignored the left side so the job was only half done. Last Friday, September 3, 2010, I completed the task, taking the reverse bus trip from San Francisco down to San Jose, observing the west side. Back in November I scribbled all my notes on the bus by hand in a notebook and ended up taking four months to type them all up. It’s not that I’m a slow typist, it’s just that the scope of the project was much larger than I anticipated. For the second trip I found a more efficient way: I live-tweeted my journey.

If you’re unfamiliar with tweeting, it means I used my cell phone on the road to type and send text messages to the Twitter service. Twitter messages, or “tweets,” are limited to 140 characters each so it enforces brevity. A great advantage is that every message was timestamped and geocoded by GPS so I have a complete record of what I saw, when I saw it, and where I was. I tried to live in the moment and just write what was on my mind which means whatever happened to catch my eye out the bus window. I know it’s a pretty pedestrian read (irony intended) but I hope I conveyed a sense of El Camino’s diverse profile.

Follow allcamino on Twitter

Below are my 167 tweets from that day from my brand new @allcamino twitter account. It took some effort to extract them all from Twitter’s web site. There are web apps that do this but they didn’t work for me because they rely on Twitter’s search engine which failed me, returning only six tweets (?!). I wrote a Perl script to convert their HTML to the format I wanted for the blog. To improve the readability I put each time stamp and location stamp against the right margin above each tweet. You can click the location links to open a Google map. My live-tweeting strategy worked great. Last year it took me four months to finish the writeup. Here I’ve done it in less than four days.

I cleaned the text up, fixing obvious two-left-thumb typos and grammar issues, but the content is largely raw and uncut. I’ve put a few editor notes in [square] brackets and added hyperlinks for your reference. I’ve written broader post-trip comments in between tweets in italics. You’ll see a bunch of the photos I took, many from the windows of the buses. Please excuse their quality. (more…)

Signposts

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

Patricia Loomis
When I met Bill Wulf at the Rose, White, and Blue Parade on the Fourth of July, we got to talking about other local historians like Clyde Arbuckle and Ralph Rambo, both of whom he personally knew. He told me I needed to check out the work of Patricia Loomis. I was familiar with her name but had never seen any of her books. I looked her up in the San Jose Library catalog and saw that they had copies but they could not be checked out because they were signed by the author and had to stay in the King Library’s California Room.

Not long after, I was refreshing my Google bookshelf and remembered to add Pat’s books to the list. On a lark I Googled her to see what else I could find out about her and was sadly shaken to find she had passed away only a week prior. On a bittersweet note, just a few weeks before that she had celebrated her 90th birthday with a big party at San Jose Historic Park. Here’s a timeline that shows how these events all converged inside the span of 30 days.

  • 6/30/2010 — Pat celebrates her 90th Birthday at San Jose History Park
  • 7/4/2010 — Bill Wulf tells me to check out Pat’s books
  • 7/4/2010 — Paulette and I watch fireworks at San Jose History Park
  • 7/20/2010 — Pat passes away in Arroyo Grande, her hometown
  • 7/27/2010 — A memorial service is held at the South County Historical Society Heritage  House
  • 7/29/2010 — I learn all this when I randomly Google her

Pat was born in San Francisco in 1920 and grew up in Arroyo Grande near Pismo Beach. She came to San Jose to attend San Jose State University and stayed for over 60 years. She took a job at the Mercury News as a reporter but most famously between 1971 and 1981 she wrote a weekly column called “Signposts” in which she presented the history of the streets of Santa Clara County and the pioneers they were named after. That’s right, a history of the streets. This is why Bill Wulf turned me on to her. Select columns were published in two volumes called Signposts and Signposts II by the San Jose Historical Museum, the same group that runs History Park.

Last week I was up in Menlo Park and discovered a wonderfully funky used bookstore on El Camino called Feldman’s Books. I went inside and made a bee’s line to the California history section to see if maybe, just maybe they had one of Pat’s books. Eureka!

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CIMG1362Signposts II is a delightful book. The table of contents reads like a South Bay atlas: Bascom Avenue, Lawrence Expessway, Montague Expressway, and more. The very first article, Abel Road in Milpitas, mentions Oakland Road and Main Street which pass by Henry Abel’s old cow pasture. I had been wondering about  Abel since it has superceded Main Street in the modern era, and now I know all about it. I learned that Henry Abel’s granddaughter Mrs. John Donovan developed Serra Shopping Center in Milpitas, a kitschy tribute to Padre Junípero. Each page is deeply researched, vibrantly narrated, and illustrated with vintage photographs. I’ll treasure it.

She wrote another seminal history book called Milpitas: a Century of Little Cornfields, 1852-1952. It’s featured in the Milpitas Historical Society’s permanent display at the Great Mall.

Pat stayed active. After retiring to Arroyo Grande she wrote two more books: Streets of Arroyo Grande and Arroyo Grande Cemetery, which incidentally is located on El Camino Real down there. Clearly she was a girl after my own heart.

Peace Signs

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Happily we made it to the Jain Center of Northern California’s 10th Anniversary procession Saturday morning. My whole family went. I was well prepared: my camera batts were fully charged and my memory card was freshly erased. I took about 340 photos but I’ve pared them down to about 100 for your viewing pleasure.

It was scheduled to start at 9:00 A.M., proceeding down Main Street from Corning Ave. down to the Jain Center. We arrived about 9:15, parking off Abel Street to avoid any Main Street closure hassles. We walked through O’Toole Elms Park, mindful of the significance. IMG_9786We smelled smoke and realized that the Milpitas Fire Department was conducting drills at their practice tower across the street. At the Jain Center things were still quiet so we sat on a park bench and waited for the procession to arrive. Around 9:30 a couple city workers blocked off the street with cones and we had some fun watching unwitting drivers get thwarted and have to do K-turns in the middle of the street, sometimes three or four cars at a time. Some Milpitas police arrived to help ease the chaos. We saw police cars, a motorcycle, and even a bicycle.

Suddenly we heard a loud pop and squealing sound coming from the direction of Abel Street. I jogged over, camera in hand, to see what it was. My imagination went wild. Was it a jail break? A light rail derailment? An accident at the firefighter drill? It turned out a street sweeper driving down Abel had run over a piece of metal and blown out its tire explosively. Happily there were no serious consequences—no injuries or evident damage—just a few streets that would have to stay dirty that day.

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CIMG1345We could see the procession up the street but it didn’t seem to be moving so I walked up to it, taking photos of Main Street scenes along the way. I had never seen that part of Midtown Milpitas from on foot before and the change of perspective was illuminating. I realized that Tom Evatt Park has a lovely view of the eastern hills; a fitting tribute to the city’s first mayor.

I reached the procession and was enthralled. Live music was broadcast from two slow-moving trucks. I recognized the singer and musicians from the temple on Thursday. Hundreds of Jains of all ages followed on foot, dressed in festive colors, most wearing a red sash around their necks covered with gold text and symbols. Some participants carried different items: banners, statuettes, musical instruments, orbs. It was fun to try to spot these objects in the crowd.

The most eye-catching items being carried were large white picket signs with plain English text printed on them in big black letters. At first glance they looked like the typical angry signs you’d find at a political rally or protest march, but the big difference is these carried simple, quiet messages of peace. My favorites were:

Intolerance is Violence – It violates the other person’s right to be himself or herself

VIOLENCE is NOT just physical; it is Verbal & Mental as well

Twisting a doctrine or a principle in order to violate it is the worst kind of violence

They weren’t poetic. They weren’t arcane. Just clear statements of core Jain beliefs which, if taken to heart, can transform the soul and therefore the universe. They weren’t pretty, but they were profoundly beautiful.

The procession marched right into the Center around 10:30. About that time I realized some elected officials had joined the parade: Milpitas vice-mayor Pete McHugh, city councilwoman Debbie Giordano, and county supervisor Dave Cortese (I didn’t see him but I heard he was there). People kicked their shoes off before entering the Center. We thought about trying to enter ourselves but we soon realized the place was packed, standing-room-only, and they were launching into some ceremonies which were likely to take a while. So we departed, hearts, minds, and cameras full of the spectacle we had been fortunate to witness and in a small way participate in.IMG_0082

Jain Center 10th Anniversary

Friday, August 6th, 2010

One of the great joys of this El Camino Real project is “discovering” treasures that are right in front of me and which have been there for a very long time. The human brain is a powerful filter and can swallow up entire continents in its blind spot if your focus happens to be somewhere else. One day I was in Milpitas looking for what was left of the O’Toole elms, and was startled to see a beautiful temple facing where they once where. I had “discovered” the Jain Center of Northern California.

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It stands on Main Street in Milpitas. I’ve been up and down Main Street countless times in the last decade but somehow I never noticed it. Once I realized it was there, I had no idea what it was; I had never heard of Jainism. I asked my co-worker Shashank, my go-to guy for all things Indian, and did some rudimentary research and learned that Jainism is an ancient Indian religion whose adherents strive for non-violence, or Ahimsa, in the extreme in the pursuit of perfect karma. They go beyond simply practicing peace in their dealings with other people. They are vegetarians to avoid committing violence against animals. The most devout, monks and nuns, don’t eat root vegetables because insects could be harmed in digging them up and they wear face masks to avoid breathing in microscopic organisms. Through meditation, rituals, and other disciplines they work to achieve victory over worldly concerns and unity with divinity.

This Jain Center in Milpitas is one of two in California and serves about 1,000 Jains in the Bay Area. Thursday morning I read in the San Jose Mercury News online that the center is marking its 10th Anniversary here with a four-day weekend celebration. There will be ceremonies, lectures, performances, and a parade. I went over that day to catch a glimpse inside the marble palace and enjoy a multicultural experience.

The parking lot was nearly full but I found a spot and made my way to the front door, admiring the architecture and landscaping. I was nervous, afraid I would make a misstep and offend the worshipers. Before leaving the house I debated changing my shoes and belt, wondering if it would be problematic to bring my leather goods—animal products—onto the property. It turns out my intuition was correct. Inside the spacious vestibule they have a special shoe room with cubbies where everyone is asked to leave their shoes and leather items; everyone walks around the temple in bare feet or socks. I was oddly comforted that I had gotten this right, and proceeded boldly.

IMG_9777The volunteer who directed me to the shoe room encouraged me to go upstairs and stay for lunch. Posted signs directed me that the temple was upstairs and that there were rules to follow: no socializing, proper attire required, etc. There was no solemn hush however; loud music was echoing from up there. I climbed the stairs and enjoyed a picture-window view of the Milpitas eastern hills. The second floor holds the temple proper, a large marble covered room. Around the walls there were a number of statues, most of cross-legged seated figures, each unique. The statues against the back wall were cordoned off and were attended to by a monk and nun in face masks. There were also three large black and white photographs of relatively recent individuals, obviously revered. There was an altar in the middle of the room surrounded by ornately carved columns. Jains sat cross-legged on the floor around the altar facing crowned officiants who were performing rituals with fruit and water. The Jains were wearing a variety of clothes including traditional saris, workday street clothes, and simple Gandhi-like wraps. Five musicians sat on the floor playing instruments and drums and singing lively stirring ceremonial songs over a blasting sound system. There were chairs ringing the room and I sat in one, deciding to play it safe and be a wallflower, as unobtrusive as possible. I probably needn’t have worried as there was some general milling about and children skipping around the room. An operator ran a videocamera which I learned was broadcasting video of the ceremony to the dining hall downstairs and over the internet. I stayed for about twenty minutes, wide-eyed and thrilled, before making my way downstairs again, opting not to back out of the room as I had seen the Jains do.

CIMG1328CIMG1329Downstairs I retrieved my shoes and entered the dining room which was laid out end-to-end with tables. Volunteers in the kitchen dished me out a serving of soup, rice, pancake-y things, and a sweet custardy item labeled “Whole, Hearty Grains.” Everything was vegetarian of course, and delicious. My favorite was the soup which was surprisingly spicy. A sign on the wall admonished us not to waste food so I cleaned my plate.

While I was waiting in the lunch line a woman entered who I correctly deduced was a reporter since she carried a notepad and was the only non-Indian in the room besides myself. I flagged her down and learned she’s Lisa Fernandez from the San Jose Mercury News who had written the story I read that morning and was there to follow up. I gave her my info and check it out…I’m a newsmaker! Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to plug AllCamino.com. D’oh!

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IMG_9778After eating I explored the ground floor some more, admiring large marble reliefs adorning the walls, the auditorium where the lectures will be conducted, and a massive statue of a seated figure in a shrine surrounded by a variety of animals and people. In one wing there were paintings on display, being sold in a silent auction. They were deeply spiritual, several depicting the same cross-legged figure motif which I believe represents the liberated soul. I was particularly impressed by a painting of the Milpitas temple, beautifully done by a 12-year-old prodigy.

I had many questions so I talked for a while with a gracious volunteer named Karuna Jain (it’s a common last name among Jains). She gave me a brief overview of the religion’s history, tenets, and practices. She explained that the statues in the temple represent the twenty-four Tirthankars, mortals throughout history who succeeded in attaining enlightenment through Jainism and are now worshiped as role models and teachers. Then we covered some deep El Camino topics. Let me catch you up.

The Jain Center is on Main Street or El Camino de San Jose. There used to be a row of elm trees that stretched from that point on Main Street to the O’Toole family mansion a short walk away. The trees and mansion were Milpitas landmarks for decades. The O’Tooles suffered mysterious misfortunes so the county acquired the property and turned it into an almshouse for the poor then later a jail. Elmwood Correctional Complex stands there today across Abel Street, named for the elm trees which sadly were destroyed in the name of progress in 2005. O’Toole Elms Park now spans where the elms were and new elm saplings have been planted in their memory. When workers were building the modern jail they unearthed Native American remains. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe were brought in as consultants to remove their ancestral remains and properly re-bury them with all due reverence.


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There’s some delicious congruence here. Linguistically the puns are irresistible. The elms connect the Jail to the Jain, the Indians from long ago to the Indians from far away. Narratively it’s tempting to suggest that the misfortunes of the O’Tooles and the bad mojo of the jail may have been brought on by disturbed Ohlone ghosts and that the Jains’ pursuit of peace calmed them with positivity. Spiritually it’s striking that the Jains chose that spot for their temple,  that the Muwekma chose the other end for their hallowed burial site, and that the Franciscan padres stopped here to give penance by the nearby creek. There’s something about this place.

All of this was on my mind as I asked Karuna a loaded question: why did the Jains build the center here? Naturally she replied pragmatically that the land was available and affordable but when I let her know some of the above local history she became very thoughtful and told me something interesting.  She said before Jain temples are built many prayers and ceremonies are performed to ensure the location’s suitability. For example the trees that will be cut for the construction are asked their permission first. (The elms weren’t cut so I’m sure they took the opportunity to chime in.) The land is consulted. I believe this land has a lot to say. We agreed that perhaps it was no coincidence that the Jains came and the Buddhists came and the Franciscans built their road to their East Bay Mission here. Again, there’s something about this place.

I very much enjoyed my visit to the Jain Center. The building is beautiful and their beliefs are inspiring. I’m very grateful for the hospitality they extended; I decided to go vegetarian all day as a gesture of harmony. If I make it to the parade down Main Street on Saturday I’ll post some pictures.

10th Anniversary of Jain Bhawan Pratishtha

August 5th – 8th, 2010
Jain Center of Northern California
722 South Main Street
Milpitas, CA 95035
http://www.jcnc.org/10th