14 Sillicon Valley Education Foundation, Muhammed Chaudry 16 Artist, Tessie Barrera-Scharaga
20 Artist, Rey Resurreccion 22 Artist, Megan Eckman 26 Ohana Board Shop, The Franceses
Playwright, Jeffrey Lo
Pops Fabrication, Matthew Rodriguez
Irene Dalis
San Jose Earthquake, Shea Salinas
Actor, Vincent Kartheiser
Vincent Kartheiser, pg. 52
Shea Salinas pg. 52
Jeffrey Lo, pg. 28
Meet the Curators, San Jose Museum of Art pg. 40
Hop on a plane tomorrow and explore with reckless abandon or plan every last detail—whatever your mood, here’s our take on one of many non-stop destinations served by our very own Mineta San Jose International Airport. Now boarding!
We’re all about exploring San Jose, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t admit that one of our best features is the super-hip, newly-remodeled airport. No need to drive for an hour because we’ve got an international airport just 20 minutes from anywhere in the South Bay and—boy, does it look cool. With the “Hands” blanketing the parking garage and colorful night lighting framing the modern, sleek building, Mineta San Jose International rivals many of the world’s most state-of-the-art airports.
Go ahead, we give you permission to get out of town—as long as you fly out of San Jose. You won’t have to drive far and, with a huge selection of nonstop flights—you should get on with your vacation, already.
PHOENIX ARIZONA
Written by mary matlack
Flight t ime
SJC to Phoenix is under two hours and flights are offered daily.
oRdInaRY
Golf, spa, pool, eat, and shop.
exceptional
Start your day with Matt’s Big Breakfast, lunch at Pizzeria Bianco and end it with dinner at Tuck Shop. With all that deliciousness, you’ll need a hike. The summit of Camelback Mountain, rising out of central Phoenix, may only be 2.5 miles round trip, but the elevation gain is nearly 1,300 feet and it is the desert, after all. If you want to get a feel for Phoenix like the locals do, consult the city’s own magazine: www.phoenixmag.com.
extraordinary
Sure, you could arrive in Phoenix and drive directly to your swanky Scottsdale lodging to begin vacationing by the pool, playing golf, and enduring spa treatment. But if extraordinary adventure appeals to you, we suggest you beeline it out of town and head north, away from the heat to the high desert instead.
Crank up the AC, plug in some of your favorite tunes and head north on Highway 17 toward Flagstaff, an admirable destination in itself. But don’t forget that Sedona, with its ancient red rock and new-age glory, is just off to your left. Spend some time in the Oak Creek Canyon and you’ll see why Sedona is a favorite of artists and metaphysical practitioners of every ilk. Oh, and be sure to experience an energy vortex and take a jeep tour – both signature Sedona attractions.
Situated at almost 7,000 feet, Flagstaff is a welcome break from Arizona’s sweltering temperatures. Pine forests with plenty of hiking, biking, and even snow skiing in the winter make Flagstaff (known to locals as Flag) a place to unpack your bags for a few days. The downtown area is quaint with not one but two historic hotels. The Hotel Monte Vista was built in 1926 and sports a vintage rooftop neon sign perched high above Route 66 as it barrels through town just one block away. The Weatherford, staking a claim on 1897, is also located in the downtown area and is loaded with historic charm. While old hotels are appealing to some and a warning to others, drive-up motels are a dime a dozen in Flag. So, if you prefer a more generic chain hotel, you’ll have plenty to choose from.
Follow the traffic – and the tourists – west from Flagstaff toward the south rim of the Grand Canyon. You can’t go wrong with a stay in Williams, just an hour from the Grand Canyon. Park your car and ride the Grand Canyon Railway or visit “Bearizona” – the area’s own drive-thru wildlife park. Native American arts and crafts and national park pride are alive and well in Williams. Stay at The Lodge on Route 66 and enjoy a spacious room – each named after a city on the famed route from Chicago to LA.
If crowds aren’t your thing and serenity beckons, head east on Route 66 (now route 40) toward Winslow, skirting the colorful splendor of the Painted Desert. A stop in Winslow wouldn’t be satisfactory without a visit to the “Standin’ on the Corner Park” complete with a girl, my lord, in a flat bed Ford. When the photos have been taken and the t-shirts purchased, continue down 2nd Street to La Posada, a renovated Harvey House Hotel across from the Winslow Amtrak station. La Posada opened its doors in 1930, the masterpiece of architect Mary Jane Colter and Fred Harvey, the man who “civilized the West.” As developer and owner of all the hotels along the Santa Fe Railway, Harvey brought sophistication to railroad travel and his hotel played host to the likes of President Franklin Roosevelt, Clark Gable and Amelia Earhart, to name just a few.
La Posada is the place to settle in, spend a few nights, and explore the surrounding areas. Read a book in the garden, pad around on the handcrafted tile floors, admire the modern artwork and allow Chef John Sharpe of The Turquoise Room to wine and dine you with thoughtful, locally sourced southwestern cuisine. La Posada’s renovation began in 1997 and continues today due to the efforts of a dedicated team of preservationists and artists. The current focus is on the restoration of twelve acres of gardens featuring native, sustainable desert plants. Scattered throughout the grounds you’ll find shade, sun, relaxing spaces, a comprehensive gift-shop and social areas tailor-made for a strong margarita and a bowl of housemade guacamole.
From Winslow, the surrounding area is ripe for exploration. The kitschy charm of Route 66 is thick near Winslow, with Gallup, New Mexico on one side and “don’t forget Winona” on the other. Just a stone’s throw from Winslow are The Petrified Forest, Navajo and Hopi country, and Meteor Crater with gift shops that sell everything from rabbit’s foot key chains to authentic Native American jewelry. Returning to La Posada after a day on the dusty trail will feel like a true oasis.
The quickest way back to Phoenix is to backtrack. If you are up for more exploration, head south out of Holbrook toward the Pinetop-Lakeside area, where Phoenicians go to beat the heat. The drive will be longer, but the elevations higher and the temperature cooler, with a July average of 77 degrees.
Come on home to San Jose, non-stop, and share your experience with a neighbor. Tip your hat to Mineta San Jose International Airport, the portal for adventure and the welcome mat on your way home.
Go to flysanjose.com and explore their interactive route map to find the non-stop flights from San Jose and send us a tweet with your favorite: @contentmag
Mineta San José International Airport (SJC) www.flysanjose.com
Matt’s Big Breakfast 801 N. 1st Street Phoenix, AZ 85004 602.254.1074 www.mattsbigbreakfast.com
Pizzeria Bianco 623 E Adams St. Phoenix, AZ 85004 602.258.8300 www.pizzeriabianco.com
The Tuck Shop 2245 N. 12th street, Phoenix, AZ 85006 602.354.2980 www.tuckinphx.com
The Lodge on Route 66 200 East Route 66 Williams, AZ 86046 877.563.4366 (From $110/night)
Bearizona 1500 E. Route 66 Williams, AZ 86046 928.635.2289 www.bearizona.com
Hotel Monte Vista 100 N. San Francisco St. Flagstaff, AZ, 86001 928.779.6971 (From $65/night) www.hotelmontevista.com
Weatherford Hotel 23 N. Leroux St. Flagstaff, Arizona 86001 928.779.1919 (From $89/night) www.weatherfordhotel.com
La Posada 303 E. 2nd Street (Route 66) Winslow, AZ 86047 928.289.4366
How many times have you driven down Bascom Avenue or Lawrence Expressway and wondered how it got its name? Though their names seem commonplace in 21st century San Jose, many of the major thoroughfares throughout the city were named after prominent people and places, back when horses and buggies ruled the roads around the valley. Certainly the most recognizable street name is Winchester Boulevard named after the infamous Winchester clan. Most people know the story of Sarah Winchester and her elaborate mansion.
But what about other streets like Branham Lane, Race Street and Stevens Creek Boulevard? What are the stories behind these street names? Luckily, Pat Loomis’ book, “Signposts Revisited- A Collection of Streets and Roads Where We Live Santa Clara County” (1982), provides an in-depth insight into all of these streets, along with a hundred others from all over Santa Clara County. The book can be purchased at the bookstore at History Park. Here are a select few to whet your appetite.
a GLimpse into Pat Loomis’ book “Signposts Revisited”
Bascom avenue: Dr. Luis Bascom and his wife Anna Marie were Kentucky transplants who moved to California during the gold rush. Anna Marie, who later became known as “Grandma Bascom,” had only lived in San Jose for a few years when she began hosting and entertaining the early state legislators and senators while the city struggled to maintain its place as state’s capital. She organized fundraisers for the church and cared for her eleven children. Her home was often a gathering place for the lawmakers since housing was scarce. Everyone helped Grandma Bascom with the daily household duties, including two senators who would haul water to the house. She was also famous for having the first piano in San Jose. In 1852, the Bascoms moved to a large 135-acre farm and Dr. Bascom gave up doctoring for farming. The road that started from their farm and traveled down to Stevens Creek Boulevard has been called “Bascom” since 1864.
Branham Lane: Isaac “Ike” Branham was another Kentucky transplant who came to California in 1846, becoming one of San Jose’s leading citizens before, during, and after statehood. He was influential in the new state government as one of 19 men who used his own money to help finance a building to serve as a meeting place for the first state legislature. During construction, he offered his own house and farm near present-day Branham Road as a meeting place until the building was complete. He later served on the town council and as a county supervisor. Branham was an interesting character who loved hunting during his leisure time. One Christmas Day, he organized a hunt that turned infamous. The bait – a coyote carcass –was dragged by a rider from outside town near Oak Hill Cemetery, down Monterey Road into town, ending in front of St. Joseph’s Church as Christmas Day Mass was letting out. That day is legendary in San Jose historical lore.
Lawrence expressway: Alfred Chester Bull grew up in Boston but had his family name changed to Lawrence due to extensive childhood bullying. When he came to California in 1849 in search of gold, he settled on a squatters claim in Santa Clara. He got into the grain business but also dabbled in hybrid fruits as well as cures for plant diseases, like “curly leaf” on peach trees. “Lawrence Road” goes back to 1852 when he, along with other farmers, partnered together to hastily build the road as a passage for farmers to get their crops to the ships in Alviso - the gateway to the San Francisco Bay. Lawrence was also involved when the railroad between San Francisco and San Jose was being built in the 1860’s. He gave the railroad a right-of-way through his land, and the station there became known as Lawrence Station. It grew to include two churches, a post office, a school and grain and hay warehouses. Lawrence served there as stationmaster until his death in 1886.
Race Street: Race Street was appropriately named due to the racetrack that was a part of the large Agricultural Park along the bend on The Alameda. For close to forty years starting in the 1860’s, races were regularly held here. In 1901, the land was sold to create the Hanchett Park subdivision. Two famous names directly associated with the racetrack were horse owner Senator Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University, and former U.S. President Grant, who was a spectator to a race in 1879. Many world records were set at the track by local horses including “Palo Alto,” Senator Stanford’s prized horse.
Stevens creek Road: Elisha Stephens, namesake of Stevens Creek Road (now Boulevard), never spelled his name with a “v,” and yet he was one of the West’s great frontiersmen. Originally from South Carolina, Stephens was chosen to be a captain of a wagontrain headed to California. During the journey he actually led the first wagon train over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, opening the notorious trail where the Donner party later got stuck in the winter, albeit two years after Stephens. By 1848, Stephens had settled down on a large farm in the West Valley, which became known as Blackberry Farm due to the berries he planted. He was known for killing and then serving rattlesnakes for dinner, which forced his neighbors to inquire what was on the menu before accepting a dinner invitation. The creek that ran through his land and next to his cabin would later be called “Stevens Creek” and the road from Stephens’ farm that continued into the valley was named after him in 1872. By that time, Stephens had already moved on, stating that the valley was getting too crowded because he could hear his neighbors’ cows bawling from his cabin. He died in 1887, in what later became Bakersfield.
source: “Signposts Revisited: A collection of Streets and Roads Where We Live,” Pat Loomis
Available at preservation.org
An Educated History
From San Jose Normal School to San Jose State
San Jose has had a focus on education that goes back more than 150 years. San Jose State has such a long and wide influence on training that it would be impossible to duplicate.
Silicon Valley: birthplace of digital innovation and the cradle of 20th century technology. It still has no rival. And if I were asked to name one institution that could be credited with being the major influence on the creativity that has had an impact on international economies I would answer without hesitation: San Jose State. Overlooked and frequently under-rated, it is San Jose State University that turns out the graduates that have made Silicon Valley so productive.
From time to time, a news article will mention Richardson, Texas, or the RaleighDurham area as being the next Silicon Valley. That wishful thinking overlooks Santa Clara County’s long history and its tremendous
Written by april Halberstadt
Images provided by Sourisseau academy for State and Local History department of History San Jose State university
head start in training talent. San Jose has had a focus on education that goes back more than 150 years. San Jose State has such a long and wide influence on training that it would be impossible to duplicate.
Education and training has been a major focus of the San Jose community since the days when we were a pueblo. In 1851, a year after California statehood, three colleges were established, all located along The Alameda. All three exist today: College of Notre Dame, University of the Pacific, and Santa Clara University. A few years later, in 1861, a business college was established to teach bookkeeping and business practices. As the county seat, San Jose courts needed trained office workers. Local merchants and manufacturing also needed employees who understood how to calculate compound interest. Education was a major industry in San Jose before prunes, or fruit cocktail, or silicon chips.
Minn’s Evening Normal School, which was later renamed San Jose State, was originally located in San Francisco in 1857. The California legislature understood the importance of establishing consistent and standard teachers’ training and created the first local normal school. Teachers’ training programs at a normal school were typically two years.
San Francisco turned out to be a very poor location for the school. It was cold and lacked adequate housing for impressionable young ladies. San Jose was a better location and classes were established even before a building could be built. The first classes were held in the high school and a new building was completed in 1872.
home to a “laboratory school,” a training class where selected young students were instructed using the most progressive teaching methods.
This type of training quickly expanded and Washington Square soon featured its own grammar school programs to provide its student teachers with classroom experience. An Industrial Arts program became part of the curriculum in 1887, and a Kindergarten and early childhood program were established in 1898.
A Junior College was established on the campus in 1921, designed to operate in connection with the teachers’ training program. The teachers’ program had now expanded from a two-year program to a full four years
products of that experiment was an innovative way of looking at educational programs. A college without bricks and mortar was created; today we know this as the University of Phoenix, an accredited program for working professionals that is not tied to a specific campus and does not have tenured faculty.
San Jose State has another characteristic that keeps Silicon Valley vital. Its students are enmeshed with the community. Other universities, located in “college towns”, are places where students live for four years and move on. Connection with the community is transient. In contrast, San Jose State and its students are deeply involved in Santa Clara Valley life. One study shows that 70% of the students have a job where they work at least 20 hours a week.
of required study. In the late 1920’s San Jose State added programs in nursing, library science, and biological science.
Federal legislation, passed in 1864, encouraged states to establish public colleges for the study of law and medicine as well as professional training in engineering, mining and agriculture. California established their first public college in Oakland in 1869, which became the University of California-Berkeley. San Jose already had an educational head start of nearly fifteen years.
Five institutions of higher learning were established in San Jose during its first twenty years. In 1872 Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland were tiny towns; San Francisco and Oakland were larger but with minimal academic resources. Stanford University would not appear until 1891. Only San Jose could offer such a high level of intellectual opportunity.
Many early San Jose State faculty members and administrators graduated from eastern colleges such as Harvard, University of Virginia and Columbia. The San Jose school they developed quickly became a model for other teachers’ colleges. By 1869 Washington Square, the campus of San Jose State became
Years ago I interviewed a neighbor, Helen Campen Hall, about her early life in Naglee Park. When asked where she attended school, her response was, “ I went to the most progressive grammar school on the West Coast, the lab school at San Jose State.” Mrs. Hall attended UCLA and later taught communications at San Jose State. She recalled that as a student teacher, she recognized teaching methods that were pioneered years earlier during her days of “lab school”.
San Jose State changed dramatically after World War II. Returning GIs overwhelmed the campus. Many programs located at Washington Square were moved elsewhere. Vocational training and the Junior College program became San Jose City College on Bascom Avenue. The high school went to a new site adjacent to Coyote Creek and San Jose High had its own new, award-winning campus.
During the 1970’s San Jose State developed an interdisciplinary curriculum known as New College. One of the most important
The average age of the San Jose State student is higher than many other schools, on both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The average San Jose State student is once again characterized as a “vocational student” rather than a “collegiate,” someone who attends college for the social aspects. During the 1960’s, San Jose State enjoyed a brief reputation as a party school, according to a Playboy Magazine poll. Those days are long gone.
To meet the requirements of local industry with its rapid technological change, San Jose State expanded its programs. Night classes in education, engineering and business continue to make San Jose State a leader in local industry. In San Jose, the educational process flows both ways; knowledgeable students bring a lot to the classroom and the instructors stay current on developing trends. This flexibility continues to put San Jose State at the forefront, keeping local residents current with emerging technologies. Education is no longer a four-year ticket punch to a career; it is an on-going process that lasts a lifetime.
Local hiring managers recognize the talents that San Jose State graduates bring to business. As one CEO recently remarked, “Don’t send me any more Stanford graduates who want to talk case studies; give me a SJSU person who has met a payroll for five years.” Think any other area can duplicate Silicon Valley’s record for innovation? I would say that it would take them more than a year or two.
Sources:
“The Story of an Inspiring Past,” Estelle Greathead,1928
“Statistical Abstract,” San Jose State University
Silicon Valley Education Foundation
Silicon Valley Education Foundation is “obsessed.”
That’s CEO and president Muhammed Chaudry’s word choice, not mine, to describe his organization’s efforts in becoming number one in the state at preparing high school students for college. Currently, only 48 percent of Silicon Valley’s high school students complete the courses required for college. “We’re obsessed with that goal,” says Chaudry.
Written by Flora Moreno de thompson
Photography by danIeL GaRcIa
One of the ways SVEF is achieving that goal is by working with school districts to make A-G courses the default curriculum for high school students. A-G courses are the minimum course requirements for students entering the UC or CSU systems, but these are not always required for high school graduation. “Now, over 50 percent of the kids in our work are in a default A-G program,” says Chaudry.
The foundation also provides direct service programs to prepare students in math and science. Their “Stepping Up To Algebra” program is taught in the summer to rising eighth graders. “When we started this program four years ago, 37 percent of our kids were passing algebra at a proficient or advanced level,” says Chaudry. “Now we’re at 48 percent. That’s important because their trajectory for college improves.”
Chaudry knows SVEF can’t achieve their goals alone. They make sure the community is involved in their efforts, too. “We’re holding forums, having conversations, and putting the content together to make sure people are informed and engaged in public education,” he says. Silicon Valley Education Foundation may be obsessed with preparing students academically for college, but that’s a good thing and something the entire community can benefit from.
How would you describe Silicon Valley Education Foundation to someone who has never heard of it?
Silicon Valley Education Foundation is obsessed with preparing all students for college and careers. We believe that’s a critical need of Silicon Valley, a need that has many components. If we’re talking to the business community, it’s a need that’s not only to prepare students for college and careers for their future work, but to retain the current workforce, they’re going to need a quality education system.
[In education], we compete – not only with our neighborhoods, now we compete with other states and other countries. The world has changed. Silicon Valley needs to be known for education like it’s known for search [engines] and iPads and social media.
SVEF acts as a sort of liaison between entities interested in giving to public schools and the public schools who could use the academic assistance. How do you do this?
In Santa Clara County, there are 267,000 students in the public education system. That’s about the size of the entire state of New Mexico’s student population. There are 400 schools. 13,000 teachers, but it’s segmented into 32 school districts. If you think about 32 different organizations with 32 different superintendents and over 165 school board members, people who want to invest in public education have a really hard time figuring it all out.
We decipher all of that for them. We connect resources by elevating achievement through innovation. The way we do that is to connect financial resources, volunteerism, and in-kind. We also connect through working with policy in school districts, providing direct school service programs, and working on innovative programs that Silicon Valley is known for.
A lot of your work focuses on improving math and science skills of the students you help. What about the arts? Do you work in this area, or would you in the future?
We plan to. We are relatively young, and education is such a large entity. We’re not discounting the arts; we think art is important. We started with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). In order to achieve the “e,” you have to have a creativity background. We embed a lot of creativity in [what we do].
What we’re realizing is for 21st century skills, you have to have an integrated approach. In doing that, creativity is really important. Even in our math and science
program we’re embedding a lot of that work. It’s not just about doing multiplication tables. Same thing with English. If you can’t read the [math] problem, how are you going to [solve] it?
Where did your interest in education and involvement come from?
A couple of places, but most importantly from my parents who provided me with the benefit of quality education. Most people you look at that are successful have a couple of elements. There’s a bit of luck, a lot of hard work, and a quality education. The dividends in education are so great. I come from the “for profit” world and I have worked at large companies, but when I wanted to give back and invest my time, education drew me close. Preparing students for their future is phenomenal.
What are the greatest challenges that you face?
The urgency of change. It takes longer to move a big system than a little system. It’s less nimble and, working with all constituents to make sure these kids are successful, is hard. This is [the student’s] life work.
I’m not a business, nor do I have a lot of money. What are the ways in which someone like me could help SVEF?
It’s always about your time, your talent, and your treasure – in that order. If you give every other Saturday for four hours for our Saturday program, “Step Up To Algebra,” you can change a life. It’s not about the math, it’s about these kids having a caring adult help them with their technology and how they contextualize their learning.
Two is your talent. Make a contribution of something you’re good at, a contextualization of your day job and how you connect it with the classroom.
The third is money. It’s not about how much you give, but it’s the demonstration. We ask that you give $5 a month. The money won’t hurt you, but it will remind you that you’re committed. As kids are more educated, their kids become more educated. It has a trickle-down effect.
What is success for you? What have you done that you’re most proud of?
The ability to connect people who care and are passionate about education with the students who are equally as passionate about learning. These kids want to learn. Connecting [them with] investors who truly want to make a difference, and being in a position to have the ability to connect those two dots, is phenomenal.
svefoundation.org
community connection
Interview by Kat Bell
Photography by daniel Garcia
Tessie Barrera-Scharaga is an artist who makes connections: connections between language and culture, art and communities, the past and the present, and, most importantly, between people. Walking into her studio space, curious viewers quickly realize that this is one artist who is not limited to the canvas. Her work tables hold glass plates, ink, clay, brushes, and an assortment of paper, while books line the shelves and carefully-placed pieces hang from the walls.
Tessie is primarily an installation artist, incorporating poetry, found objects, clay, prints, and rescued clothing into a cohesive statement. Her home, she mentions, is going through a long awaited expansion. “I have never had the luxury of living with my art, like other artists do,” she muses “because my work is very large and it is always in storage” – a common sacrifice of the large-scale installation artist. With the expansion of her Willow Glen home almost complete, Tessie is eager to realize her dream after more than fifteen years of boxes and storage spaces.
Walking through Tessie’s space, it is easy to forget you are in a home at all. The crisp lighting hits her piece titled “Lifeline,” casting shadows of the socks and dresses of a young girl encased in raw clay. Further into the room, her installation, “Coffee: The Malady of the Third World Dreaming” looms – a metal framed bed with a pierced sack of coffee beans for a mattress, the beans spilling over the hard wood floors.
other families. To me, it is important to take care of the community that your children grow up in.”
Inspired to get involved, Tessie began volunteering in her daughter’s classroom. “During that time all the parents started noticing that this little classroom was getting art, but not the whole school, so they got together and talked to the principal – and the principal offered me a job as the art instructor,” she laughs. What began as one mother volunteering soon grew into a teaching role she enjoyed for the next fifteen years. “It started with a couple of grades and through the years we added more. To the point that when I left there, we had art throughout the entire school.”
Beyond her experience in her daughter’s school, Tessie has also created community art projects with several San Jose area schools and volunteered with underprivileged children in her family’s home in El Salvador. Some of this work has focused on helping to foster the children’s connections with their home language and their culture. “A lot of the students go to a school and they learn a second language, but they don’t really know very much about the culture or the background.” Tessie’s work often incorporates and introduces literary figures from the Spanishspeaking world that children may have no other opportunities to experience – figures like Gabriel García Márquez, José Martínez Ruiz, and, her personal favorite, Pablo Neruda.
Similarities and meanings present themselves to Tessie in the children’s art, both here and abroad. “Art provides a space where you can dig into yourself, to bring out or to let go of your fear and to try different things. I see that happening with children here and in El Salvador. Art is also a place of joy, because children really enjoy being given attention and doing something with an adult. That’s really what’s most important and enjoyable for them. It validates their experience.”
Working with these children and helping them to discover and develop these skills, Tessie is also able to bring in much of her own perspective as an artist. Her work explores sometimes difficult social and cultural issues and the important role of art in life.
“At River Glen, we used to do a project with the fifth graders that was a peace mural, and it started right after 9-11. It involved designing an image that symbolized peace for them.” The children were invited to explore symbols of peace from the past such as the olive branch and the peace sign, and come up with their own. “It was about creating peace in your classroom, in the playground, and thinking intently about it because it starts there. I tell my students – countries who don’t get along go to war and if you can be the person that can create harmony, later on you don’t know who you can become. You can be the President of the United States, and it all starts here in the classroom.”
It’s not all war and peace though, Tessie explains children here and abroad are very much the same and often ask her to teach them to draw a variety of things. “I have found that elementary and middle school students are very interested in nature. Animals and plants provide points of departure for many of our projects. Students learn to draw them, paint them, sculpt them in clay, transform them into mythological creatures, and even use visual language to show their concern regarding endangered species.” As the children grow, they also express interest in drawing figures – especially people in their families and communities.
So what is next for this local artist? “I have been teaching at The Community School for Music and Art for the last year. Through them, I am still teaching children from underrepresented communities,” Tessie explains. She also currently has a piece titled “TwentyFive: Chronicle of a Journey” featured in the Honoring Women’s Rights: Echoing Visual Voices Together show at The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. Many San Jose residents will recognize the piece, which was previously shown in an empty storefront on 4th Street by Phantom Galleries in downton San Jose. tbsartstudio.com “I
For a large portion of her career, Tessie worked as a graphic designer, and returned to school to complete her BFA in Spatial Arts locally at San Jose State. She then continued on, receiving her MFA from Mills College. It was during and after this time that she not only honed her skills in ceramics and installation, but also discovered a passion for teaching. After working with children at the San Jose Museum of Art, Tessie was dismayed to discover that her daughter was not receiving any art instruction in kindergarten. “Teaching was just a matter of a necessity for me” she observes “Your children force you to do things, you want them to have art and music, and that was a motivator for me. And, through that, I affected other children and
Tessie has also spent time in El Salvador volunteering alongside her mother in a local Catholic orphanage. “At first, when you give a class and you show them how to use the materials they are very curious and can’t wait to try them. They want to smell it, touch it, they want to feel it – what is this thing? They get it in their fingers and want to put it on their face,” she says. These children have never seen a crayon or an oil pastel. “For the children in El Salvador in the orphanage, they have absolutely nothing else except what volunteers come and do with them. When I go, I bring all the materials, but...” Tessie adds, “You don’t have to go far to find children with nothing.”
no L aBeL. Self owned. Self made.
Written by Richard Faulk
y R e e s u r
i o n
It’s not every day that you come across a song that name-checks world-chess champ and eccentric recluse Bobby Fisher.
In fact, by my nonscientific count, there are only two. It’s even more remarkable then that one of that pair would be a hip-hop single performed by a tribally tattooed rapper from downtown San Jose. (Buy me a drink sometime and I’ll tell you about the other song.)
Rey Resurreccion is a rapper, songwriter, and producer. He is also chess master and chess teacher. Today with seven EPs and full-length releases to his name and his first major tour behind him, supporting Oakland stars the Hieroglyphics, the 28 year old is coming into his own as an artist.
As you might expect of a rapper and a (chess) player, Rey’s lived a life of contrasts. When he was four, his parents divorced. Weekends were spent at his mother’s house in middle class Blossom Hill. The rest of the week, he
Photography by JRG Photography
San Jose rapper, songwriter, producer, and chess master
lived with his father near Monterey Road, a neighborhood Rey describes as on “the rougher side of San Jose.”
“Yeah, I’d spend my time getting into trouble with all the bad kids,” he says, laughing.
I laugh too. Soft-spoken, focused, and palpably exuding a work ethic (coffee is his drug of choice, like a student trapped perpetually in finals week), it is difficult to imagine the man in front of me ever having the time to get into trouble.
Monterey Road is the subject of Rey’s 2010 song, “The Hometown,” performed with DJ Cutso of the Bangerz. The backing is a Mexican banda, an almost drunkenly maudlin wailing of brass, over which Rey conjures idyllic images of urban life: ice cream trucks, cookouts, flea markets, first crushes, gang bangers. If you replace the mariachi oompah with the jangle of the music-hall, “The Hometown” is uncannily similar to Madness’s “Our House” – both bittersweet and unabashedly sincere love letters to homes that many would find neither so homey nor so lovable.
In one of the fleeting shadows that cross the piece, Rey alludes to being a member of the only Filipino family in a Hispanic neighborhood. It is just another example of the artist as anomaly. But far from the alienated rockand-roll rebel he might have become, Rey Resurreccion is more a bridge builder and cultural interpreter, someone who moves easily between the contradictions of his life and has a knack for bringing people together. He has collaborated often with Bay Area hip-hop act The Bangerz and producer Nima Fadavi, and he has ties to local clothiers Cukui and Breezy Excursion.
Beneath his good-natured diplomacy, however, there is steel. “With the business side of music, I’m very strategic. It’s always a battle. It’s always about going to war and having that state of mind to come out on top.” So speaks the voice of a chess master.
Rey became a chess fiend at seven, when his father taught him to play. That was before he started rapping in junior high school – but not too much before. For almost ten years, Rey has taught chess to elementary school kids, as a volunteer with the nonprofit organization Academic Chess.
“This is my way to connect with kids, and to keep me grounded,” he says. “It’s cool to be with kids, you can be a goofball and they still appreciate you.”
Yes, the man who boasts “I’m a killer on the beat, leave your family in anguish,” just called himself a goofball.
For all its sonic experimentalism, hip hop, like chess, is a game of restraints. It is a highly conventionalized art form, where time-tested tropes of insult and self-assertion are mixed and matched to build on familiar themes, like player hating, microphone grabbing, and good-life living.
So the blend of rap and chess is closer than chalk and cheese after all. In the compositions of Rey Resurreccion, you can hear the mind of a master strategist at work, laying down rhymes like gambits on the board.
The typical Rey Resurreccion song – if there is one – has two parts in tension: smooth, understated vocals over a backing of strong electric beats with rhythms that often pull against the flow, introducing a bracing element of discord. With samples ranging from mariachis to kitschy lounge arrangements to off kilter jazz, Rey’s compositions could easily veer off the tracks. But they never do. His voice never loses its calm measure, and the songs never escape a mood of confident control. The sign again of a strategic mind.
Rey grew up steeped in hip hop, but he does cop to the influence of his father’s musical taste, which can be broadly classed as “quiet storm”: Sade, Hawaiian reggae, even Frank Sinatra. This legacy shows in Rey’s delivery, a smooth R&B croon. It also shows in his taste for retro samples.
In the untitled first track of 2012’s To the Top, Rey raps over a threadbare foxtrot that sounds like it’s by the house band in a lounge lost somewhere in purgatory. The rapper’s honey voice purrs with a gravely edge that, in this setting, can’t help but evoke Tom Waits drunken loser persona, but amped up and muscular, like the cocaine-inflected monologues from Super Fly.
Rey’s earliest public appearances were at the now-defunct Voodoo Lounge. “That was like our central hub,” he recalls. “They would have touring acts stop through there all the time.” When the lounge closed last year, he says, the hip-hop scene dispersed. “We don’t have a performance venue anymore.”
Without a steady venue for live music, the scene has had to get creative. It has been the clothing stores that have stepped into the cultural gap. Rey explains, “San Jose has gotten to the level where the street-wear companies are doing very well. That’s taken over what the music scene was doing when the Voodoo Lounge was open.”
A longtime friend of Danny Le, aka Dandiggity, one of the forces behind Cukui Clothing & Art Gallery, Rey and Cukui have formed a sort of informal confederacy. They synch the releases of new songs and new T-shirts, which they then cross promote online. In his videos, Rey struts the streets of San Jose togged out in Cukui designs, and he has even recorded two CDs for the shop, “Old Rust, New Bang! parts 1&2.”
“Cukui is practically my label,” he says. “Wherever they ship their clothes, they’re shipping my music.”
People of a certain age may read this and think of an infamous haberdasher named Malcolm McClaren, who used to boast that he invented something called punk rock merely to help him sell bondage T-shirts.
But, while San Jose hip-hop acts may compete as fiercely as the London punk bands ever did, exploitation seems genuinely absent in this milieu.
“The scene is very supportive,” Rey says. “Cukui and I have grown together, you know? And as we grow, we help each other out. We’re very much equals.”
In Rey’s estimation, San Jose’s diffuse hip-hop scene may be on the verge of coalescing in the space they are carving out on their own.
Brought together by adversity, musicians perform where and when they can, playing galleries, art festivals, daytime parties. “We pack Cukui. We pack the warehouses.”
“This city is just not set up...” he hesitates judiciously, “in a way that’s friendly to the arts scene. So we’ve been taking it into our own hands and doing what we can.”
Rey implies – OK, more than implies – that San Jose has taken an antagonistic stance toward its hip-hop community – a hostility that it doesn’t show to rock acts. “They see how everyone is dressed, and…” he trails off. “You know that’s just how they’ve been conditioned: to be afraid of something that’s different. The city needs to understand that what we’re doing is positive.”
In support of his point, Rey cites Oakland’s Hiero Day, a free outdoor festival sponsored by local hip-hop stars, the Hieroglyphics, the band he has been touring with. It took place on Labor Day, the day before Rey and I spoke.
“They shut down three city blocks, thousands of people were there, and it was an extremely peaceful event. People took their kids and everything. I was just talking to a bunch of people there, and we were all saying, ‘When will we ever see something like this in San Jose?’”
Before our conversation is over, Rey answers his own question: “The first thing is to be established and for people to take you seriously. But right now, who am I to be like, Hey, we’re going to shut down the street and bring everybody out. One day, when someone has the resources and the power to do something like, maybe it’ll happen.”
And maybe it’ll take someone with the cunning and the drive of a chess master to do it.
@ReyResurreccion reyres.com
Megan Eckman is an illustrator and writer who is trying to help people reclaim their imaginations. She recently released her first book, “How to Outsmart Tea Pirates (and other useful sailing tips)” that combines fanciful illustrations with her quirky short stories and poems.
Megan eckman
Written by Shannon amidon sanjosecreatives.blogspot.com
Photography by daniel Garcia
“I’ M con S tant LY I n SPIR ed BY Youn G adu Lt B oo KS and t H e c L a SSI c Fa IRY ta L e S .”
What do you do?
I’m a pen and ink illustrator who rekindles wonder by reminding people of the magic they felt as a child. In my artwork, anything is possible and the unusual is the norm. The magic exists in the everyday and it’s my job to help others see it again.
Where can we find your work?
You can find my work on my website and several galleries and boutiques across the country. A full list of shops is available on my site.
What inspires you to create and how do you keep motivated when things get tough?
I’m constantly inspired by young adult books and the classic fairy tales. I always get my best ideas when I go for a walk, however. My mind begins to play with the possibilities of what could be.
What do you think is more important: content/finished product or technique/ process?
Content! I’m a narrative artist and if the content doesn’t let me tell a story, it’s not going to grab my attention.
Who are some people who influence and/or inspire you?
My father used to read me the dark Grimms’ fairy tales before bed along with the work of Edward Gorey, especially his “Gashlycrumb Tinies,” an unfortunate alphabet book where 26 children meet untimely ends. Max Ernst’s crazy engraving mishmashes really influenced me in art school as well.
If you could be any fictional character who would you be?
Sophie Hatter from Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle.
When do you get your best ideas?
On a long, afternoon walk by myself. It never fails.
What materials/tools do you use most to create your work?
Rapidograph pens and smooth Bristol paper.
Are you self-taught or formally educated? How do you think that has influenced or affected your work?
Both. I attended art school and received degrees in art with an emphasis in drawing and English with an emphasis in creative writing. However, I taught myself most of my technique since pen and ink is only taught in the most basic forms nowadays in college. The formal education was the best thing I ever received because it allowed me to learn the history of art and that really helped me put my work into the larger context of art history, art theory, and also English lit.
What would your creative work taste like?
Lemon poppyseed cake. Sweet with just a hint of tartness.
When you are not creating what do you like to do?
Bike. My boyfriend got me addicted to cycling a few months ago and now I love putting on those padded shorts and riding into the mountains.
How did you learn to access your creative talents and gain the confidence to put it out there for everyone to experience?
I grew up with a very supportive family who always pushed me to show off my work. It took years to gain the confidence I have now but I still get nervous when I call gallery owners. However, if I don’t share the work I make then what’s the point of making it? If I want it to have an effect on people, if I want to rekindle wonder in the magic that exists around us, I have to show everyone I meet.
What advice would you give others just beginning their creative adventures?
It takes professionalism and ambition to be a self-supporting artist. You have to present yourself as a real artist if you want to be taken seriously and you need to have the ambition to contact hundreds of shops and galleries so that a handful can say “yes!”
studiomme.com
Bu IL d I n G c o MM un I t Y o ne Boa R d at a tIM e
Written by Flora Moreno de thompson
by J P costanzo
In Hawaiian, ohana is the word used to mean family. In San Jose, it’s also the name of Ohana Board Shop, a busy little surf and skate shop on Stevens Creek Boulevard. The shop has become an inviting place for customers who quickly become regulars and in some cases, friends of owners Anne-Michelle and Arun Frances. “New customers tend to buy things,” says Anne-Michelle. “Returning customers tend to hang out.”
This is exactly what Arun wanted ever since working in a surf shop in Pacifica as a teenager. “It wasn’t the type of shop that you walk into where you almost feel intimidated,” says Arun of the shop where he spent his formative years. The idea of someday owning his own board shop haunted him, until finally the opportunity to open one with wife AnneMichelle arose.
Besides the usual merchandise one would find at a board shop, there’s also a half pipe in the store, where students can take skateboarding lessons. “We’re booked every week,” says Anne-Michelle.
Getting more kids on skateboards is something the Franceses would like to see. They go regularly into local schools armed with plain decks and paints, letting kids decorate their own skateboards. “It’s just a way to make skateboarding more mainstream and more friendly for families,” says Anne-Michelle.
Arun has grown up surfing and skateboarding all his life. “On my tenth birthday my dad got me a surfboard and that was it,” Arun says. “That’s all I ever wanted to do.” Luckily for him, it’s now all in a day’s work.
How did you guys decide to open a board shop?
AF: I grew up surfing and skateboarding all my life. When I was 16 or 17 I worked at a surf shop, and I just liked the whole atmosphere. I worked at the shop for about a year, and I wanted to open up my own shop. After that job, I ended up going to school, working in computers…I did that and realized I didn’t like being in an office or cube and I wanted to do what I loved. I didn’t want to do something just for a paycheck.
The opportunity arose, and we didn’t really think about it. We had always said we’d do it in three years. We had a three-year plan and then the opportunity arose for that spot and it turned into like a three-month plan.
AMF: I think it was like eight weeks.
AF: We didn’t even put any thought into it. We said let’s do it. We’re having a kid; it’d be so cool to have our own shop and to have our kids growing up in the shop.
AMF: We opened because we both had full-time corporate jobs, we just had our first child, and after just a few months we realized we didn’t want to be gone from her all day, we wanted to be with her. So we said, ‘Oh let’s open a skate shop so we could have her there all day long.’ It was kind of just a dream; it was never really approached as a business. It wasn’t a well thought decision. It was just, ‘Let’s quit our jobs.’ And so we did. You’re one of the few places in San Jose that offers skateboarding lessons. Is this something you always had in mind for the shop?
Photography
“ n e W cu S to M e RS tend to B u Y
t HI n GS . Retu R n I n G cu S to M e RS tend to H an G out.”
AMF: No. It probably started when we had our second child. Our kids could skate before they could walk. We thought there were probably a lot of parents like us that were kinda cool and different and wanted the alternative X Games type of [sport] for their kids. We’ve always been very comfortable with our kids on skateboards very early on, as long as they were wearing helmets.
We built this half-pipe in our back yard and we said, ‘Why don’t we try teaching lessons to some of our friends to see if their kids would be interested?’ So we started marketing toddler skateboarding lessons. Then we built a half-pipe in our shop. That’s when we started really seriously doing the lessons. Now we’re booked every week.
What’s the youngest student you’ve had?
AMF: Two and a half. It’s more of a playdate than a skateboarding lesson. The instructor follows the kids around. At this point all of our lessons are one-on-one. The only reason we’d have more than one is if they’re siblings. We’ve found that with the little ones, they need one-on-one attention to stay focused. When do you think kids should learn to skate?
AMF: As soon as their parents are comfortable with their kids being on a rolling board. They need to have their helmets on. Both of our [oldest] kids learned how to drop in on a half-pipe when they were five. If [the parent is] comfortable, [the kids will] be comfortable. It just comes down to what you’re comfortable with your kid doing.
Do you do any sort of outreach or instruction at local schools?
AMF: We get in touch with someone at an after school program. We’ll set up a six-week program and go there after school and we teach kids how to skate. We’ll do fall and spring [lessons].
AF: We also do the paint your own board program where kids can paint their own skateboards. We do it at our cost; it’s just making it so we can get the boards there. It’s pretty cool to see the stuff they come up with.
Tell me about your family and their role in the business.
AF: Our kids are eight, six, and almost two. They hang out at the shop a lot. When the kids are in the shop hanging out, and then
you have customers come in with their kids, they all end up hanging out and playing in the shop. It just gives you that community feel. People come in and feel comfortable [in the shop] with their kids. That’s part of the vision that I had, no one feels a bad vibe and it’s all good energy.
What’s next for Ohana Board Shop?
AF: We hired a business coach to help us. There’s so much potential with the shop and the things that we do. That’s all the material stuff. But I think what makes us truly happy is when we do something like the YMCA camps and these kids find out on the last day that they get to keep their board and their helmet, and they’re super stoked. To be able to give back like that would be super cool. I’d love to be able to donate skateboards more, maybe once a year. Put a bunch of boards together and give them away, go to a different skatepark, like maybe on the East Side.
AMF: Creating more of a community center. I don’t know how or what that would look like, but we like that vibe, hanging out where
you work and having that community. An indoor facility would be kinda cool.
AF: If the opportunity arose we’d like to do something like that, because you create a community instantly. All the skaters come into one place. It depends on the vibe you set, but [a positive vibe] will carry on to everyone that’s in there. There are so many things that could happen, but who knows?
ohanaboardshop.com
Jeffrey Lo: Playwright
Written by Gillian claus
Jeffrey Lo received the Arts Council Silicon Valley 2012 Artist Laureate: Emerging Artist Award. Lo is also the founding artistic director of San Jose’s ‘06 Ensemble where he wrote and directed “A Kind of Sad Love Story,” “Barcelona Love Song” and “The Chase.” He is producer of the New Play Development Factory which highlights and develops the work of local Bay Area playwrights.
It all started with a crush on a girl. Jeffrey Lo’s high school crush wanted him to audition for a show. He had no fear of speaking in front of others and he enjoyed making people laugh. So at 16, he walked into his first theatre. His confidence and willingness to learn on his feet has helped him to succeed there ever since: acting, directing, and writing plays.
While Lo was a senior at Evergreen Valley High School, the class was given an assignment to write and direct their own shows using the Drama 1 students as their cast. Lo wrote a 30 minute play called “All I Have.”
Describing himself as a “smug 17-year-old,” he decided to write and direct a full two-hour play. Banding together with a close group of friends, they managed to nab the high school’s theatre for the summer before college, washing cars to raise funds. His play was about a psychologist and a troubled teenager whose mother is dating a drug addict. It nearly sold out its one-night run. Admitting the play had its imperfections, Lo said, “It was one of those things where we just didn’t know any better. We were going off pure adrenalin and emotion – all twelve of us.”
Lo still returns to Evergreen Valley High every other year to write and direct a show
with high school students. He enjoys finding kids that are not too sure about performing. He said, “They don’t take it super-seriously, but they have that raw skill there that is not disrespectful, but ‘Oh yeah, I’ll do it’ – which is kind of like I was.” The last show he did there was about a Filipino high school basketball star. Although audiences enjoyed the play, “they laughed about the fact that there was an Asian American high school basketball star that was going to play in the NBA,” said Lo. “Six months later, Jeremy Lin proved me right – a Palo Alto boy.”
The wry humor that naturally flavors his work comes in part from his upbringing. “I’m Filipino, right? So my mom is a nurse.”
As the only member of his immediate family born in the U.S., he admits to a childhood which involved not knowing much about his hometown of San Jose beyond the “coffee shop down the street.” His parents emigrated 25 years ago and except for the occasional trips downtown for Christmas in the Park, his world was fairly insulated. With two older sisters, Lo is relieved that one of his siblings will be going to medical school which “makes my mom happy.”
Receiving the Arts Council’s 2012 Laureate Emerging Artist Award also pleased his mother. The $5,000 award is not tied to
any specific project and doesn’t require any reports, it is just intended to help an artist live. “None of my family is really involved in the arts,” he said. “So it was at least one gauge to let them know I wasn’t completely wasting my time.”
It is difficult to see where Lo could have wasted any time. He went straight to UC Irvine as a journalism major, but he then doubled and added theatre because he found that he “couldn’t escape it.” He still did theatre on his own terms, however, founding his own company, the Pipeline Players, rather than participating in University productions. “We did our own shows the way we did it that one summer and we did it for three years.” Fascinated by the craft, Lo also continued to read all the plays he could get his hands on.
At first, he was intimidated by the length of experience of most people working in the theatre department. So he quietly soaked up knowledge while beginning to embrace his own identity. “I came to realize that it was a huge advantage coming from a very different background. There’s a certain perspective that I come from that not a lot of people can write [about].”
Despite finding success down south, Lo came straight back home. He knew early on,
Photography by daniel Garcia
although he wanted to go somewhere different for college, “San Jose was where I wanted to be.”
But college really paid off for Lo, especially his love of reading. A week after returning to San Jose, he was working as a soundboard operator at TheatreWorks. He was eating dinner in the green room when he overheard the director, Leslie Martenson, talking to some of the actors about her next show, “Superior Donuts” by Tracy Letts. As luck would have it, Lo had read every one of Letts’ plays because his college professor had compared the playwright’s style to his own.
As soon as that evening’s show was over, Lo ran up to Martenson and introduced himself, saying, “Hi, I’m Jeffrey. I overheard that you are directing “Superior Donuts” by Tracy Letts – I love his work and I have read all his stuff. If there’s any way I can be of any help or be involved or assist you in any way, I would love the opportunity.”
So she said, “Go ahead and email me your resume and stuff and we’ll see if I can contact you.” Thinking fast, Lo said, “Well, actually,
I have my resume in my backpack – give me one second.” He ran back to the soundboard and grabbed a copy of his resume and handed it to her. Ever since reading about Eugene O’Neill running away from home with a suitcase full of clothes and a suitcase full of scripts, Lo has always walked around with a backpack full of scripts and resumes. Hitting the books paid off for him again.
Martenson, who is now Lo’s mentor and number one champion, later told Lo it was the fact that he mentioned specific works by Tracy Letts that made it click for her that he really knows his stuff. He credits her as a “most remarkable woman who has done everything” for him, including nominating him for the Arts Council Laureate.
Although he is only 24, Lo has already written three plays – eight actually, counting his early stuff. But, like some of his favorite playwrights, he prefers to determine where we start counting. Lo explained that in Edward Albee’s foreword to one of Eugene O’Neill’s lost plays, he described his first play as “Zoo Story.” “The thing is,” Lo continued, “he
wrote six plays before that. But he considers “Zoo Story” his first play. So I would say, for myself, I’ve written three plays.”
Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities to see Lo at work in the the Bay Area. He just directed a world premiere called, “The Strange Case of Citizen De La Cruz,” at San Francisco’s Bindlestiff Studio – where his play, “A Kind of Sad Love Story,” will have a month-long run in March. His newest play, “Angel in a Red Dress,” just had a staged reading at the Impact Theatre in Berkeley. Lo said, somewhat sheepishly, “It all kind of came all at once.”
In December, the ’06 Ensemble, where Lo serves as artistic director, will return with a second installment of the Bench Project. The first one was a series of four short plays that were all set on a bench. The one-night-only event packed the Dragon Theatre in Palo Alto. This December, the Bench Project 2 will feature seven plays. The venue will be the Pear Avenue Theatre in Mountain View and admission will be warm jackets for the homeless.
Some major Asian American playwrights are participating in Bench Project 2. Philip Kan Gotanda and Julia Cho both wrote for the project. How did he manage to get them to donate their time? Having worked with Cho and Gotanda before, Lo simply sent an email saying, “Hey, we’re doing this project and we are trying to get ten-minute plays set on benches – are you able to write one? I am up front with them. I say we have no money.”
Eager to help others make their work known, Lo is willing to read scripts from anyone who is interested. “I am always looking for new people to do readings or workshops. The point of the ’06 Ensemble is to give people an opportunity to express their voice.”
No longer a smug teenager, Jeffery Lo has indeed begun to develop his own voice. Playwright Philip Kan Gotanda once sat down for coffee with Lo and they talked about the Filipino American story. “In terms of theatre and poetry, it is one of the Asian American stories that hasn’t been explored a whole lot. My generation of people are starting that. We are starting to build a voice and tell our story.”
Falling in love with theatre has given Lo a powerful platform to tell that story. Perhaps he owes that girl a cup of coffee.
Bench Project 2 - December 7-9,8pm Sunday matinee at 2:00
Admission is donation of jacket for needy
pops
pops fabrication fabrication
Written
Flora
Right now, somewhere inside his Cannery Park workshop, Matthew Rodriguez is probably welding. Rodriguez is the man behind Pops Fabrication, a bicycle design and fabrication business located just outside of Japantown.
Rodriguez’ bikes are handmade works of art, each one taking several weeks to complete. A steady stream of custom bike orders and bike customization projects keeps the shop busy, sometimes well into the early morning hours. “We are swamped, but we could be busier,” says Rodriguez.
Before opening Pops Fabrication, Rodriguez was the bike-building half of the design business duo formerly known as Shorty Fatz. Although the partners have gone their separate ways, Rodriguez is still in business building custom bikes, specifically his signature 8 Series bicycle frame. It took him months to get the aesthetically stunning 8 Series design to where it is today.
But Rodriguez is quick to give credit to his mentors, who taught him the technical skills he once lacked to engineer and fabricate a bike properly. Peter Enbright, co-owner and president of Phil Wood & Company, a local bike component manufacturer, saw how passionate Rodriguez was about bike-building and encouraged him to learn about the engineering that goes into a bike’s design.
It was through Enbright that Rodriguez met Dale Saso, a local bike builder. Rodriguez apprenticed under Saso for a year and learned how to fillet braze, a technique commonly used in bike-building to join metal together. “That’s the way I make most of the frames now,” he says.
The 8 Series represents all of the knowledge and skills shared with Rodriguez by his mentors in the bike community. “Basically, the 8 Series was a bike that went to college,” Rodriguez says.
“When I wake up and come here, I enjoy it. I love working with the bikes. It’s my meditation.” He thanks shop manager and girlfriend, Aisha Santiago for doing all the front-of-house work, letting Rodriguez focus on his passion. While Santiago works to make sure things run smoothly at the shop, Rodriguez gets to work on what he loves. “I’m the one that makes bikes,” says Rodriguez with a smile.
Matthew Rodriquez of Pops Fabrication: customized handcrafted bicycles in San Jose
by
Moreno de thompson
Photography by daniel Garcia
The name Pops was the name that my cousin and I used to call my grandfather. He raised both of us. When my grandfather passed away in 2009, I started calling what we were doing Pops Fabrication.
My grandfather always fixed everything. He always offered to show me how to weld if I was willing to learn. His brother was a professional welder and my grandfather knew how to weld also. They both took me under their wings because they saw I was interested in welding. My uncle gave me his welding jacket and my grandfather gave me his helmet and a welding machine and they both schooled me.
I went to a welding course in high school, but at that time I wasn’t that focused. I learned more from my grandfather and uncle. But later, I apprenticed under Dale Saso. He taught me how to fillet braze.
When I started making bike frames, I wanted to express my artwork within the
frames, but I didn’t know the ins and outs of frames. I studied them on my own and through my own research, cutting up other frames and doing stuff like that. Peter Enbright’s background is engineering, and he has helped me to develop frames from an engineering and machining standpoint.
Bikes have always been my happy place. Building bikes was something I never considered as work. As a kid, I was building lowrider bikes and going to lowrider shows. But as a business? Nobody ever told me I could make a business out of something I love to do. Everybody thought it was just a hobby. They never thought it was something you could make a business out of. It wasn’t until people started liking what I was doing that I got interested in making it a business.
A lot of people say it should be some sort of flattery, to see my frames copied. It really hurts to see somebody take something that I put a lot of sweat and time into developing. I know from my heart that what I’ve created can never be duplicated because that much quality and that much passion that we put into every frame…nobody could ever copy that.
My signature design is San Jose based. Everything that is in the frames that I design is from everything I’ve been influenced by growing up in San Jose. This is why the frame that I build has so much more meaning to me.
When I did the original sketch for the 8 Series, it wasn’t even planned. A friend of ours wanted us to develop a bike that was faster and something he could commute with. The number eight had a big impact on my former business partner and me in 2008. The whole drawing process was in the month of eight (August). My drawing of the bike was on 8/8/08.
Aisha motivates me and helps me tremendously with the business, my friends and family too. A lot of my friends took on their own businesses and it’s really inspiring. It can be done.
It makes me happy to see people even want something that I’ve created. I don’t ever want to change. I want to have a crazy demand for my bikes, the only thing though is I want to take in what I can handle because I don’t want to change anything with the quality. Something that I really feel strongly about is keeping my bikes American made. And if I can provide jobs in the future to help the economy, that’s where I want to be.
There’s something about making it with my own hands. I can’t compete with these mass produced companies. It’s a niche market. Our customers want something really personal.
Seeing the customer smile is better than a trophy to me. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
A cyclist yells the rally cry from within a colorful peloton of bikes. Other riders cheer on and ring their bicycle bells as pedestrians move closer to the street to see what all the commotion is about. A few cyclists tow small trailers with custom-made sound systems, turning the ride into a rolling street party. The mood is happy and energetic; cyclists pedal at a casual pace, perfect for striking up a conversation with other cyclists.
For those unfamiliar with the sights and sounds of San Jose Bike Party, it’s an eye-catching parade of bikes and riders of all shapes and sizes. But for the riders taking part in the organized chaos, it’s a way to connect with other folks from all over the Bay Area who share a passion for bike riding.
What started as a small bike ride with less than a hundred riders, has evolved into a monthly San Jose institution, attracting up to 4,000 people. Their mission statement is simple, yet meaningful: Building community through bicycling. For almost five years now, they’ve managed to do just that.
“Everyone [at Bike Party] comes from different backgrounds,” says Gilda Messmer, a cyclist who has been attending Bike Party for four years. “You’ve got professionals, you’ve got kids with no jobs, there might even be homeless people riding at Bike Party. But the one thing we have in common is that we like to ride.”
Bike Party takes place every third Friday of the month. The location is announced approximately 24 hours before the ride on their website, sjbikeparty.org. Every ride has a theme and the routes take riders through a different neighborhood each time. Riders congregate up to an hour before the 8 p.m. start time to meet up with old friends and make new ones. “It’s a unique experience,” says Katie Heaney, a Bike Party volunteer. “Kind of like a rock concert. There’s definitely a celebratory aspect.”
Photography
Heaney started off as just another cyclist about four years ago, introduced to Bike Party through a friend. She has since become a Bike Party volunteer, or BIRD (Bicycle Information Resource Director). BIRDs meet regularly to plan routes, go on test rides, keep the website up to date, and decide on upcoming ride themes. “Bike Party has never had one person in charge,” says Heaney. “All these tasks are shared [by BIRDs] each month.” Riders who attend Bike Party and enjoy it are encouraged to give back to the community by volunteering.
At Bike Party rides, BIRDS help cyclists stay on route and to the right side of the street. A smaller group of BIRDS, called RAVENS, collect trash left behind by cyclists along the route. “I’m always amazed at how good things bring on more good things,” says BIRD, Carlos Babcock. Babcock is also a member of the Caltrain Bike Advisory Committee and San Jose Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. “We’ve left parking lots cleaner than when we got to them.”
Because Bike Party rides start at night, riders are safer in large groups and are more visible to drivers. “An indication that your streets are safe is that high school girls are out on downtown streets at night,” says Babcock.
Riders are encouraged to abide by the “How We Ride” rules posted on the Bike Party website. These include stopping at stop lights, staying in the right lane or bike lane, and using lights. Riding while intoxicated is not condoned by Bike Party or its volunteers. Bike Party doesn’t ask the San Jose Police Department to come help conduct traffic at busy intersections or give tickets for infractions, but they sometimes show up at rides. According to Heaney, the presence of SJPD does help deter reckless behavior. Bike Party does not need a permit to organize as cyclists are allowed to ride in the right lane.
Despite all the efforts of BIRDS to keep riders in line, they can’t control everyone. “We attract everybody,” says Heaney. “Most come out to have a good time, but sometimes we get a few bad apples that give a bad impression.” These riders are generally the exception to the rule. The party-like atmosphere and sense of community keep riders coming back for more.
“I hate missing it,” says Messmer.
As more and more people take to the streets on bikes, San Jose Bike Party attendance continues to steadily increase. “I see people in other communities organizing their own bike parties, which has already been happening over the past year.” says Heaney. Some cyclists branch off to form smaller rides because the party-like crowds of Bike Party are getting too large or too slow.
“Other groups are grasping our momentum, but they’re not affiliated with us,” says Babcock. Bike Party often promotes these other rides because it is an opportunity to support and encourage the cycling community. But no matter how many other rides take place, one thing is for sure: every third Friday of the month, the rally cries and bike bells of San Jose Bike Party will continue to ride on.
sjbikeparty.org @sjbikeparty
“ uLt IM ate LY, W e
Want to PR e S e RV e
an o L d t R ad I t I on WI t H a M ode R n t WIS t. We L o V e
do I n G I t a LL , FR o M
o L d- Fa SHI oned
co MB -o V e RS to M o R e M ode R n ta P e RS , Fade S , and de SIG n S .”
Written by trang nguyen
Photography by chris lovos
Creative Direction by geoffrey nguyen
Growing up in San Jose, JR Soriano and Jordan Benigno felt the pressures of going to school, getting into a good university, and eventually landing a good, secure job. Like most young people their age, these pressures were magnified because they grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley, where tech-driven jobs are highly coveted and often glamorized. This led Soriano and Benigno to believe that there was a cut-and-dry formula to growing up, getting an education, and settling into a life-long career. But instead, these two chose a different route.
Having always been those friends you’d call for a quick haircut in their garage, Soriano and Benigno decided to legitimize their talents and love of cutting hair by going to barber college and becoming licensed barbers. Although some considered it a risky decision, the two, affectionately dubbed the Taper Gang, couldn’t see it working out any other way. With the undying support of those around them, Soriano said there was no doubt in his mind. “Everyone around me was supportive,” says Soriano. “They knew I was already cutting hair, so they were happy that I was taking my hobby seriously and turning it into a career.”
Soriano and Benigno don’t ever try to glamorize or fantasize about their work. They’ll be the first to tell you that they’re just barbers, and all they want to do is cut hair and make men feel good about themselves and their new haircuts. “It’s not a trend and we don’t do it to be cool. We are passionate about what we do and we just let the work speak for itself. We do what we love, and love what we do,” says Benigno. “We don’t want to be type-casted into only doing a certain type of hairstyle or a certain type of man, if anything, we want to cut your hair in a way that allows you to make the hair, the hair doesn’t make the man.”
This humility and dedication to the service reflects in their work and their loyal customer base, some of whom have been getting haircuts since high school. “It’s not simply about the quality hair cuts, it’s about us making our friends feel good,” says Soriano. “Even though they start as our clients, we all end up becoming friends.”
Though they have many loyal customers, Soriano and Benigno don’t ever rest easy on that. “We are always trying to learn more and better ourselves,” says Benigno. While both working on separate clients, you can always hear Soriano and Benigno pushing the other with encouraging remarks like “That could be cleaner” or “You can do a better than that”. The two barbers know that every haircut means more practice. Not only in skill, but also in patience.
“Ultimately, we want to preserve an old tradition with a modern twist. We love doing it all, from old-fashioned combovers to more modern tapers, fades, and designs,” says Soriano.
Even at the end of a long day spent cutting hair from sunrise to way past sundown, Soriano will tell you that he’s exhausted, but he loved every minute of it. And if you ask Benigno, he’ll tell you he’s always excited in the mornings because he knows he gets to do what he loves for a living.
“We just want to cut hair, that’s it and that is all.”
milpitaslegends.com
JR Soriano & Jordan Benigno
Behind the art hanging on the gallery walls is someone who said, “That one!”
meetthe curators
What does It take to curate?
Start with passion, but be ready to throw in a lot of determination. Endurance can’t hurt, and an ability to handle criticism is a must. For many an art enthusiast, the life of a curator can seem glamorous and exciting. Visions of champagne glasses, gallery openings and personal studio visits with artists can often overshadow the reality of late nights, unpaid internships, and the ever-present art critic that looms behind every show opening.
Like the artists they feature and cultivate, every curator is different and so are the spaces they work in. From expansive museums to shared studio spaces, curators come from every different viewpoint, genre, and taste.
Some may possess the freedom to cultivate favorite themes and artists, while others enjoy working in teams for a common purpose and the creation of a legacy.
Though their means and methods may differ, there are some things they all have in common – a passionate love of art, an unwavering sense of purpose, and the drive to persevere.
Written by Kat Bell Photography by Daniel Garcia
Ken Matsumoto is a local artist and moved his studio space to the Japantown location in 1996. As part of this space, he also opened the Art Object Gallery in 2000. Mainly devoted to Bay Area artists, the gallery is also open for community events and proposed shows.
the Studio curator: Ken
Matsumoto
In 1996, a week before his studio space was set for demolition as part of a Redevelopment Agency project, Ken Matsumoto saw it. A “for rent” sign on the old North-Side Walnut processing plant in the heart of Japantown. It was fate, and a journey that would eventually lead to the start of Art Object Gallery. In order to afford the increase in his rent and the supplies to make the warehouse structurally sound, Matsumoto began renting out space to three fellow artists. Soon the idea for combining mailing lists and holding a show to expose their patrons to each other’s art grew. Matsumoto began erecting gallery walls in the expansive space remaining and, in 2000, Art Object Gallery was born.
His first shows included friends and colleagues. “I would do a little group show,s” he recalls, “and I would know most of the artists personally. We were friends and I liked their work.” One of his first shows was titled “Depth of Field” and consisted of work from Santa Clara art professors.
Over the years, Matsumoto grew the shows and artists through word of mouth and recommendations. “I knew some people and those people, would tell me about other people or I would be visiting a studio and see someone else’s work, or somebody would recommend somebody and they’d come by with some of their stuff. If it looked cool to me, we just did it.” Some of Art Object Gallery’s largest shows would contain 20 artists at a time.
When asked what his favorite part of curating is, Matsumoto emphatically knows the answer. “Hanging the show,” he says. Installing the pieces and making them work in the space comes easily for him. Not surprising since Matsumoto knows every inch of the gallery – he built the walls. “I know the space so well and I guess I have a talent for doing it.” he says.
His least favorite part of curating? “The marketing of the shows is a little brutal.” He laughs, “The part I like the most is probably the announcements, the design of the cards, but that’s as far as it goes.” He used to consider himself an introvert, but not anymore. Matsumoto grins, “I guess it took owning a gallery to realize that.”
He also enjoys coming up with the concepts and titling the show, “I think that’s where I rationalize still having the gallery, that there is this creative aspect to it. There’s this constant struggle between doing something for the gallery, and doing my own work, especially when the gallery doesn’t always give you a return on your investment.”
What is his advice to artists and art enthusiasts who want to curate a show? “Don’t wait, just go out and talk to people, you would be surprised how many people in our community are really willing to help you.”
the Museum curators
With five different gallery spaces, multiple staggered showings, and a legacy that dates back to 1969, the San José Museum of Art cannot function with a single curator – it needs three. Monica Ramirez Montagut is the newest addition and the Senior Curator. “As curators,” she observes, “we are really responsible for the direction of the museum and addressing the audience...Trying to challenge the educated viewer, while still making the museum content accessible and relatable to those who may not have that background.”
“Yes!” adds Jodi Throckmorton, Associate Curator since 2007. “There’s the art world and then there’s the community here, which we’re eager to attract to the museum. Sometimes those two groups cross in their interests, and sometimes they don’t. We try to balance that and take it into account when we set up our exhibition calendar.”
Rory Padeken, Curatorial Assistant since 2011, nods. “Some shows may also work in other museums or cities – such as San Francisco – but not work here. Because of our location or audience.”
“There is not one solution and we have to keep testing different models,” Montagut continues, “All of us see what other museums are doing and testing, and we consider if it is something that will interest our community. It is a dilemma. We also try to balance the showings in terms of having painting and sculpture, so that there is a variety.”
Though the curators may work on some shows together, they plan the majority separately. “We work based on a strategic plan,” Montagut reveals,” That’s the one thing a new curator may not realize. They can have something hanging in their house, but that doesn’t mean that you would program it for your museum. You are always programming based on the mission of the institution. We always have a strategic plan. Right now, it started in 2012 and goes to 2014.” Throckmorton adds, “but we are also able to take more risks.” With up to five shows rotating at a time, it is sometimes easier to offer variety and simultaneously address different audiences within the space.
“Yes, if you were to do a cutaway of the museum at any time you will always find something that meets traditional expectations of art,” Montagut observes. “But you will also find something that speaks to a younger audience – that may be a little bit risky.”
Padeken agrees. “It is important for museums to provide and create experiences that you may not encounter elsewhere. Those kinds of experiences may reflect powerful themes, which museums communicate to the viewer. [By] asking what about art may be important to their lives?”
Is curating for a museum different than for galleries? Throckmorton says, “We don’t have to worry about selling anything or have to think about what may sell. It’s refreshing to know you can take money out of the equation. Viewers can come and enjoy art knowing it’s not about them buying it.”
“It’s more about education and exhibiting the art. Being a cultural and educational resource to the community,” Montagut adds. “Ideally, if you are serving your audience and bringing in shows that interest them, then the sponsorships will come. Certainly a lot of our time does go into cultivating relationships with art collectors, and special donors. But a lot of their generosity comes from cultivating their trust in the institution.”
So how do they discover subject matter that will challenge audiences and delight patrons? “It’s a lot of problem solving,” Montagut says. “First, we get our clues from the artists – through studio visits. Sometimes they are targeted, if you are looking for an artist that might fit a specific project. Other times, you may have heard about an artist...or someone recommends them. Through those, you start to notice the different subject matter [that] artists are exploring. If there is anything happening in society, the artists are the first ones to put their finger on it.” Once they have identified a theme or subject, it is a matter of additional research, discussion and searching again for artists that may better fit the vision. “It is a back and forth process, where sometimes the artist that first inspired the idea may not even end up in the show. Because you did the research, and went more in depth,” Montagut says.
“One of the things a lot of people don’t realize,” says Throckmorton, “is that I had a phone call today for a show that is two years in the future. Ideally, we are working really far out.”
“A lot of our exhibitions are also drawn from our permanent collection.” says Padeken.
So what made these three very different people become curators? “Mine began really early,” Padeken begins.“In 11th grade, when I wrote my first Art History paper. My US History teacher told me I was a born art historian. She asked me to take her European History class in Senior year, and she covered Art History every Friday. It just started from there – with writing my first paper on Winslow Homer.
“I was Pre-Med” Throckmorton laughs. “I took an art history class in my second year, and it was all over.”
Rory Padeken
jodi throckmorton
Monica Ramirez Montagut
Montagut asks, “Pre-Med? Really? When I was a teenager and going to college, I didn’t know the profession existed. I discovered one of my teachers at the university did exhibition design. I found out about curators, and – after reading a couple of texts – discovered they are like editors. Curators pick the first painting you’re going to see when you walk in the door and the last thing you’re going to see as you leave. What the highlights are. The pace. I started doing studio visits. The first studio I visited, I said I was a curator,” she laughs, “How do you say you’re a curator when you’ve never curated?” Shrugging, Montagut adds, “but how do you do a studio visit if you’re not a curator? You need to start somewhere. It’s just putting together a project, and finding someone to show it. You start finding your way.”
So what advice do they have for the next generation of curators?
“Internships,” Throckmorton says. “Many!” “Just do it” Montagut adds.
Padeken shifts in his seat. “Keep in mind, the art world is very subjective. It’s about different likes and dislikes, not everybody will like you or agree. Be driven and determined. Whatever you do, it will always be criticized. But then, it will always be great.”
CHERRI L AKEy Anno Domini
366 South First Street
San Jose, CA 95113
408.271.5155
www.galleryAD.com
Cherri Lakey and her partner Brian Eder started Anno Domini Gallery in 2000 as an Urban-Contemporary space. It has since become the hub of the San Jose art scene – building up local artists, music and culture
Monica Ramirez Montagut (Senior Curator)
Jodi Throckmorton (Associate Curator)
Rory Padeken (Curatorial Assistant)
San Jose Museum of Art
110 South Market Street
San Jose, CA 95113
408.271.6840 www.sjmusart.org
MonICA RAMIREz joined the Curatorial Department of the San Jose Museum of Art recently from The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. She received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and her Master of Architecture and Ph.D. from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, ETSAB, in Barcelona.
JodI tHRoCKMoRton joined the Curatorial Department of the San Jose Museum of Art in September 2007. She graduated with high distinction from San Francisco State University, where she earned her MA in Museum Studies. Her thesis was titled, Changes in Curatorial Practice: “the Fundraising Roles of Art Museum Curators.”
RoRy PAdEKEn joined the Curatorial Department of the San Jose Museum of Art in September 2011, and is responsible for developing thematic exhibitions from the museum’s permanent collection. He graduated from the California College of the Arts with a Masters in Visual and Critical Studies
the Gallery curator: cherri Lakey
“We’re still here, who would have thought? 12 years,” Lakey says. She sits at the desk in their gallery, Anno Domini. The night before, the SoFA District was alive with South First Friday festivities – another creation of the Two Fish Design duo.
Located in the old Camera One theatre since 2005, Lakey and Eder have been the curating force behind Anno Domini since they began it in 2000. One of the very few art venues that isn’t nonprofit in San Jose, A.D. gallery is one of the few spaces that strongly features counterculture exhibits and urban street art.
‘When we [Anno Domini] started, urban art and street art in San Jose had been criminalized. We saw it as an incredible movement and most of the art world wanted to dismiss it. For a lot of years they insulted it, and then they tried to ignore it, but it’s just not going away. If anything it has just gotten stronger. A lot of artists in our genre feed on it in a way,” says Lakey.
Asked what it takes to curate a show, Lakey easily responds, “It’s really simple, the simplest thing in the world. It’s about the work. Period.” Too many people, she says, get caught up in finding the perfect gallery space or venue, “I don’t care if you’re the Tate, or a nonprofit venue or if you’re a warehouse or a backyard, it’s just a box. It’s what happens there, what you bring together there, that’s the thing that will shine. If you’re more concerned about the box – and that’s what people are mentioning – than you have much bigger problems. It’ll never work out.”
Lakey also cautions that many new curators and gallery owners have unrealistic expectations and definitions of what makes a gallery successful. “What is your definition of being successful?” she asks, “If it’s a really nice house and a really amazing car, then get a 9-5 corporate job that will take care of you with health benefits and salary. Personally, for Anno Domini, this is about art history. For us, this is about legacy, and we look for people that are artists. They live, breathe, and think about this every single day – every minute of the day. It’s just who they are, who we are.”
“For me, the curation of Anno Domini is about seeing something amazing and then being part of the sharing of that for others to experience,” says Lakey. Through all of the openings and street fairs, live music and zines, that is what Lakey and Eder have achieved. Anno Domini is, at its core, a space for sharing. “We have to let artists know to keep going. It’s hard, they don’t know if anyone is looking or listening or caring, and we are there to say –absolutely.”
What advice does Lakey have for artists and curators starting out? “The reward is in doing the work, not what happens to it afterwards. We need people who are very passionate about the hunt for the artist and the discovery. This stuff is too amazing to stress about, it’s euphoric.”
cHeRRI L aKeY
y spur san jose
Interview and Photography by danIeL GaRcIa
Written by Britt clyde Make-up & Hair by dacia carroll
established in San Francisco in the early 1900’s, SPuR comes to San Jose bringing
research•education•advocacy
Living in a big city has obvious perks: the constant buzz of life, endless resources at one’s fingertips, and stimulating diversity. But with the growth of a city comes important decisions that must be made, decisions involving things like transit systems, walkability, sustainable design, disaster planning and community building.
It’s easy to focus on the everyday details, but what if you stopped, looked around, and really thought about what was best for the city of San Jose as a whole? This past year, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, SPUR, has expanded to San Jose. SPUR is a member-supported, nonprofit organization that began over one hundred years ago, originally called the San Francisco Housing Association, SFHA.
The organization’s mission statement is, “Through research, education and advocacy, SPUR promotes good planning and good government.” It started when a cadre of city leaders were concerned with the below standard housing in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fires. Their involvement led to the State Tenement House Act of 1911, which was a change to state law. After remaining a solely San Francisco-focused organization for decades, working on things such as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the promotion of compact growth patterns, and assisting in the planning of BART, SPUR decided to take its expertise to the largest city in northern California: San Jose. Leading the San Jose office is Leah Toeniskoetter, a native of California.
Not only does Toeniskoetter have a background in real estate development with Toeniskoetter Development, Inc. she was also a credit analyst at Comerica Bank in Detroit and San Jose.
Additionally, she worked as a project associate for the BrazilianAmerican Chamber of Commerce in New York City. On the world stage, Toeniskoetter speaks Portuguese, worked as a translator in Brazil and as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small village in Bolivia. Though Toeniskoetter did not anticipate a position like this, she was receptive to new possibilities. “My mind was open to leading an organization, working in San Jose and helping my city move forward,” she says.
With a family history in community involvement, it is no surprise Toeniskoetter has taken on this challenge. Her father was a founding member of the Children’s Discovery Museum and has served on countless nonprofit boards. Her mother also served on the board of the San Jose Museum of Art. “I believe in giving back to the community and want to have an impact on where we are going in the future,” Toeniskoetter says.
SPUR’s style when it comes to urban issues isn’t about taking sides; they work through consensus and collaboration. “We are a policy organization. At the core of what we do, we are usually described as a think-tank,” says Toeniskoetter. “The beauty of what we do is that we start with a question facing the city, bring in a group of engaged and knowledgeable people to help us come up with achievable solutions and move into action by saying, ‘Now that we are all on board with what can be done, how do we actually make it happen?’”
In addition to their policy research, SPUR is constantly hosting programs to cultivate a growing number of ‘urbanists’ in the South Bay. “In our Urban Center in San Francisco, we hold three to five events a week, and that makes it extremely easy to really foster a conversation about the way a city ticks,” Toeniskoetter says. “In San Jose, we’ve had the fortune to partner with many organizations
in downtown to hold those types of events so we can discover our city while at the same time talking about how we continue to foster the type of city we want.”
Since their San Jose launch party in March, SPUR has held many types of programs around issues like improving public transit, the fundamentals of good urban design, creating bike-friendly business districts and what comes in the absence of the Redevelopment Agency.
For Toeniskoetter, a few themes have emerged since her involvement with the organization. “San Jose’s future is urban,” she says. “We want to live in a walkable, active place with viable alternatives to driving, the ability to live close to work, parks and our basic needs.’ I think that is an attitude that’s been evolving.”
So what’s the aim for Toeniskoetter and SPUR in San Jose? “There are 500,000 people coming to San Jose in the next several decades. SPUR is excited to think deeply about where they will live, work, shop and play,” she says. “The city has said we don’t want to grow horizontally anymore. So the question is, how do we go vertical and how do we do that in a way that maintains and respects the neighborhoods that exist now?”
The real task at hand is to channel the energy and enthusiasm around SPUR’s work in San Jose into bringing meaningful change. She realizes that it is not going to be the same as it is in San Francisco. “SPUR has approached this expansion in a really openminded way,” says Toeniskoetter. “While SPUR has long-standing urban principals at its core, bringing that expertise to the San Jose context is something we pay very close attention to. A hundred years of experience in San Francisco taught us that real change comes incrementally and sometimes takes a time. We have the leadership, the staying power and the patience to get there right,” Toeniskoetter says. “Now, comes the fun part of connecting our South Bay urbanists to our city’s future.”
SPuR San Jose
spur.org/sanjose
Irene Dalis
Written by Gillian claus
Irene Dalis has a message for you about music. It belongs in your life. Not just inside the car radio, but in your house, on your warm summer evenings and in the darkest hours of winter. Maybe even sung live in a beautiful 1920’s theatre, complete with grand chandeliers and red velvet curtains.
That is why she started Opera San José – to bring music into our lives, especially the lives of children.
Photography by daniel garcia
Irene Dalis as Princess Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” Painting courtesy of Irene Dalis
Someone once told Dalis that “San Jose is one of those ‘also-ran’ cities.” She disagreed, saying, “Wait a minute, so we are not San Francisco. We are what we are and we have our values.”
The strong value that Dalis puts upon music began with her father, a determined Greek immigrant who insisted that each of his five children study an instrument. Dalis chose to study piano and, like her siblings, she would sing for him in the evenings.
Even though San Jose was recovering from the depression, the family found many opportunities to enjoy the arts. Touring divas came to give recitals and pianists gave master classes. “But we didn’t have our own,” says Dalis.
1940’s San Jose had a population of just 50,000. “Everybody knew everybody.” Life was simple. Dalis and her sister enjoyed strolling about the “lovely downtown,” watching many more parades and celebrations than today. She admits to missing “the spirit of community we used to have.”
When she decided to go to college, she could walk from Delmas Avenue to San Jose State, where she took a minor in math and a major in music. The university did not offer a masters program at that time. Due to the war, the school was full of women, following the traditional teaching profession.
Always a quick study, Dalis skipped two grades in elementary school, and by 1946, she had graduated from SJSU. At 20, Dalis had her BA and was ready to continue piano at Columbia University in New York. Because she sang so beautifully, her sister insisted that she take voice lessons in New York. Dalis’ family sent money with the proviso that she was only to study with the best. The lessons were expensive but her vocal skills eclipsed her piano work and Dalis soon found her way to Milan, via a Fulbright Scholarship. She found her mentor in a German teacher, Otto Mueller, who brought her to the stage in Berlin. Her 1957 US debut was at the Metropolitan as Eboli in “Don Carlo.” Her critically-acclaimed career as a mezzo-soprano spanned over 20 years – just listen to a recording of her Kundry in Wagner’s “Parsifal” in Bayreuth in 1962. Always a sturdy woman with a strong voice, her roles got her noticed. “When I went on stage,” says Dalis, “it was either to kill someone or be killed.”
San Jose State
After 20 years of performing, Dalis made the decision to retire and return home to San Jose. In 1977, she was appointed to the music department at San Jose State with a full professorship. It was when she saw the calibre of her first class of 75 singers, that she knew there was the potential for an opera company, based on a German model. Dalis created the Opera Workshop Program at SJSU.
In 1984, The California Arts Council suggested that Dalis remove University from the name and it became Opera San Jose. Due to Dalis’ savvy management, the company has always operated in the black. Over the years, Opera San Jose has purchased two 24,000 sq. ft. operations facilities and two apartment buildings (fourteen units total) for free artist housing. Singular in the United States for offering a full year residency, the company provides resident artists with rent-free accommodations and health benefits as well as the opportunity to sing multiple prominent roles in repertory.
Schools
Reaching college students at SJSU enabled Dalis to build a world-class opera company right here in San Jose, but she still wanted to reach more of the population. So she went about building a complete K-12 program to introduce school children to the opera. In fact the first dress rehearsal of the season, The Pearl Fishers, marks 30 years of bringing schools in to watch final dress performances. “Upwards of 500,000 children have been served by our programs,” says outreach coordinator Lettie Smith. Each year, students attend dress rehearsals in the California Theatre.
outreach
Because of her happy experience playing Gertrude in “Hansel & Gretel” to delighted children each year in Germany, Dalis knew that young people could appreciate opera. So OSJ brings a touring opera into local schools. The 2012 production of “Billy Goats Gruff” deals with the ever-topical subject of bullying while sharing the art form, introducing the different voice types, and exposing little ears to some powerful vibrato.
Operas often require young cast members to perform in larger scenes. Local children from performing arts groups like Vivace Youth Chorus have performed in recent operas, providing an invaluable experience for young singers.
The company also has a Vocal Drama Class which is tailored to middle school children. Choral and drama students are taught vocal, breathing and audition techniques. Although there is a booking fee for in-school sessions, Smith tells me that they have “just received funding for 10 performances free of charge for local Title 1 schools.”
competition
To Dalis’ delight, an anonymous donor called OSJ and proposed subsidizing an annual competition, to the tune of $50,000 per year. Since 2007, the Irene Dalis Vocal Competition has awarded prizes to ten finalists. In true American Idol style, a $5,000 prize for Audience Favorite is determined by a vote. First prize is $15,000 and every finalist
receives a $2,000 Encouragement Award. The competition is now open to all ages because when Dalis discovered “a phenomenal bass in his forties,” she insisted they remove ‘young’ from their call for entrants.
audience for opera
Dalis is the first to admit that opera brings in “more mature audiences.” Their typical demographic is over 60 years old, as are forty of their major donors. It is more likely to see a sprinkling of grey hair and hearing aids than to spot many young people in the house.
So why isn’t a new generation finding their way into the opera house? One possibility is the price. “Sets, costumes, orchestra and unions are expensive,” says Dalis. But opera combines all of the other art forms into one magnificent spectacle, so a dollar spent here stretches a little bit further. It also supports a tremendous number of local jobs, from wardrobe mistresses and technicians to singers and prop builders.
Could it be that the stories are no longer familiar to young audiences? Perhaps Gen Xers are worried that they won’t understand what is happening. No worries. Not only are supertitles displayed above the stage, translating every word, but General Manager Larry Hancock gives an engaging informative talk before each show which introduces the characters, explains the story and provides some history of the composer’s life.
challenges
For a woman with so much strength and success behind her, Dalis is loathe to discuss difficulties she has faced, saying only, “Life is about coping with disappointments and losses.”
And there have been some profound losses. In 1990, her home in Willow Glen burned to the ground, including the grand piano.
Twenty years later, she suffered an injury in an auto accident. Ironically, Dalis had told the San Francisco Chronicle in August 2010, “I could be hit by a truck tomorrow.” It wasn’t a truck, but a white SUV that broke her leg in a hit and run on 280 in October 2010. Despite the injury and a long recuperation period in the hospital, Dalis is back in charge – both in the office and attending every performance at the theatre. “The SUV hit my ankle, not my head,” says Dalis.
opera in the california theatre
Before I leave her office, Dalis entreats me to encourage young people to come to the opera. Her eyes twinkle as she thanks me for the “visit,” and she looks every bit the grande dame in the photographs on her wall.
Although it had been many years since I had been to the opera, I took her advice and saw the “Pearl Fishers.” The story of jealous fishermen fighting over a mysterious woman unfolded before me and I was completely
captivated. Romance and betrayal delivered by powerful voices that resonated in the spectacular California Theatre. Opera is much less of an intellectual exercise than a purely physical experience. You don’t just hear the opera being sung, you feel it. In our world of minimalist screens and smart phones, perhaps we all need to discover the intimate drama of human experience once again. Live – right here in San Jose.
But don’t just take my word for it. Come for the music. Irene Dalis will be there waiting for you.
As part of National Opera Week, “Die Fledermaus” will preview on Oct. 30 and “The Billy Goats Gruff,” K-12 touring opera, will preview on Nov. 1. Both performances will take place at MLK Library.
operasj.org
salinas earthquake shea
Shea Salinas plays for the best team in major League soccer: the san jose earthquakes. He’s battled through injuries this year and somehow has kept focused on what’s important.
Building success. The Earthquakes are poised to win the Supporters’ Shield, given every year to the team with the best record in the MLS. With new signing Marvin Chavez and Salinas providing speed on the wings, and prolific scorers Chris Wondolowski and Steven Lenhart in the middle, the team has led the standings all season and are poised for a deep playoff run.
What do you think is responsible for the big success this year?
I think the biggest thing was an attitude change. It’s my fifth year in the league and this is the first time I’ve been a part of a team that has such a strong will to win. We look at teams in the past like LA and Houston, that consistently do well in the playoffs and the attribute they had was that will to win – just to scrap for points – no matter how well they’re playing. We play for 90-plus minutes and everyone has a strong desire to win the game.
The Quakes have scored in injury time repeatedly this year. It seems like you’re never out of the game. I think eight times now we’ve scored after the 90th minute. It sounds corny to say but it’s easy to kind of quit mentally and lose focus when you’re down a goal, but we’ve been able to push through it.
The team motto this year is “Goonies Never Say Die” – who came up with that?
I think that Lenny (Steven Lenhart) said it after one game that we came back. Someone caught the reference and it’s just really exploded.
Groundbreaking for the new soccer-only stadium (on Coleman Avenue, to be finished for the 2014 season) is October 21st, before the game against the LA Galaxy. Can you talk about that event and the potential world record?
They’re going to try to get 6,000 people there to each have a shovel and help in the groundbreaking, so that should be neat. Everyone digging for two minutes to break the Guinness World Record. A few of us are going to help out and grab a shovel. Shouldn’t affect our game too much.
What will it mean to you to have that new, soccer-specific stadium?
I think it’s huge. Right now, our stadium (Buck Shaw, on the Santa Clara University campus) is nice to come to. It’s very intimate but it’s a little hectic. It’s not ideal to fit a whole bunch of people. In the new stadium, people won’t come just to watch a soccer game, they’ll come for the experience. So filling 18 thousand seats with a winning team on the field shouldn’t be a problem.
Interview by cHRIS VIcKerY Photography by daniel Garcia
Styled by nicole Blair www.nicoleblairwear.com
Photo Assistant by JP costanzo Clothes from the underground Fashion Boutique
Injury Time. Salinas suffered a major injury early this season when Rafael Marquez (of the New York Red Bulls) seemed to intentionally kick him in the collarbone, breaking it in four places. He missed nine weeks and had reconstructive surgery.
How do you feel about the collarbone injury?
Are you bitter?
No, I’m not bitter. I’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason. The Marquez thing was unfortunate. I had started every game up until that point. And going into the game I had a feeling that something not great was going to happen. To be honest I just thought I would score an “own goal” or we would lose the game badly. But the game was tied, we were playing well, and I had an assist. And then as soon as I hit the ground, I knew this was the thing that I had the bad feeling about, that I had been praying about.
Was there ill will between you two?
A few previous corner kicks before that, he had kind of wrapped me up and I’d fought him off. And after talking to the coaches, they said “let him take you down and hopefully we’ll get the call.” Because he had really been fouling me every single corner kick. So I go down, thinking surely we’re going to get a penalty kick. And unfortunately I suffer a broken clavicle because of it. But the ref didn’t even call a foul!
Do you play them again this year?
No, we don’t. Probably see them in the playoffs, I bet.
Seeing Stars. Salinas plays with European legends David Beckham, Thierry Henry, and other big names.
What’s it like to play with those guys?
It’s awesome. These are guys I’ve watched playing soccer since I can remember. My first MLS game ever was San Jose versus the LA Galaxy. One of our forwards had gotten injured that week so (coach) Frank Yallop started me at forward. I’ve never seen David Beckham or Landon Donovan in person. Forty thousand people are there, it’s their home opener, fireworks are going off. In the tunnel, Landon Donovan stands right in front of me and David Beckham stands right next to me. My jaw’s wide-open, staring at both of them, starstruck! And my teammate, Jason Hernandez, hits me in the back of the head and says “Focus, kid!”
Many Americans are having success in Europe – Clint Dempsey in England, Michael Bradley in Italy. Do you have aspirations to play in Europe?
I would never turn an offer like that down… well, depending on the offer! But I’ve reached my goal. I’m a professional soccer player. I love what I do. After games, I can go hang
out with the kids, the fans. I enjoy the fact that I can go coach a youth team and be a good role model to all the kids.
The MLS is an up and coming league, but it’s not the Bundesliga. (German professional football league) Do you get recognized in the grocery store?
Sometimes. And it’s flattering to get recognized, to have people know you. It’s not a small league. I mean I’m making a living doing it. But I’m also able to also stay grounded. In England, you have the paparazzi. Clint Dempsey talks about it all the time – they have to go on vacations to the States just so people don’t recognize them.
What about the US National Team? Some of your teammates were called up for the game against Mexico. I know you’ve had the injury setback – are you on track for that?
I have no idea…you can’t control that. The only thing I can control is how hard I work. So I just work as hard as I can and let everything else fall into place. If you keep playing well, you’ll get rewarded for it.
Formative Years. Salinas is from Lubbock, Texas, where football is king. With his smaller size, his father pointed him to soccer, cross-country and track to protect him from injury. Others along the way have helped him grow as a player.
Did you want to play football or soccer in high school?
Football coaches tried to get me out there because of my speed. They would tell my dad “no-one’s ever going to catch him! He won’t get injured!” and my dad would always say “one time someone does catch him, his soccer career is done!” I ended up getting a soccer scholarship to Furman University and played there for four years, never thought I was going to be a pro soccer player. I had all my prerequisites to go to physical therapy school and was just blessed to have a good senior year. I got invited to the combine, Frank Yallop saw me and decided to take a chance on me – so I was drafted out here in San Jose’s expansion year (2008).
What about mentors, when you were coming up in soccer?
My dad was my coach until I was about twelve. And then I had great club coaches with the Dallas Texans and then Solar. And then my coach at Furman University – Doug Allison – was sort of like a second father to me. My dad put it onto him to watch over me. Then, coming out here, Ian (Russell, San Jose assistant coach) helped me out a lot. He was a winger, and knew the position I was in so he helped me out.
Keeping the faith. Salinas started his career in San Jose, and then played for Philadelphia and Vancouver before returning. Now he and
his wife enjoy life in Willow Glen. With the support of church and friends, they’re keeping focused on their goals.
What was it like moving around so much?
My wife and I looked at it as an adventure. We got married when I went out to Philadelphia. We loved Philadelphia, loved the city, and we had a great church and great group of friends there. Same thing in Vancouver and now here in San Jose.
How do you like it here?
Oh, I love San Jose. Vancouver was an awesome city but it rained a lot. We rarely saw the sun. So coming here, we rarely see a cloud. We love that. And I’m able to golf a lot – I love golfing.
What do you guys do for dates?
I have an old 1985 CJ-7 Jeep. So we’ll go on “Jeep cruises” through the Santa Cruz mountains. We like miniature golf. We have a lot of dinners with friends from bible study and from the team.
Is the team pretty close like that?
Yeah. My wife has mentioned that the group of girls is the closest group on a team she’s ever been with and we’ve been with a few teams, so yeah the girls hang out. They tailgate before games. We have people over for dinner a lot.
The church community is something that’s really important to you?
Community is extremely important. Coming home from practice and sitting on the couch all day is not something that I like to do – I like to go out and hang out with friends and do stuff. I think moving my wife from city to city has been difficult and without the support we’ve had, it would have been extremely difficult for her, just to find friends, people to hang out with. You look back and you have hindsight on what you’ve learned in all the different cities, in Philadelphia and Vancouver. She and I have grown closer together and closer to God and just stronger in our relationship.
Do you feel like your faith is the biggest factor in your soccer success?
I would say so. In soccer it’s easy after a good game to let your highs be too high or after a bad game get too down on yourself. It’s easy to get prideful. It’s easy to get depressed in a sport where it’s dependent on results, playing well, producing goals and assists, things like that. Having faith has been a lesson in staying on an even-keel. I don’t find my joy in soccer because, if I did that, you’d be super prideful or super-sad, depending on how the Saturday night went. So I find my joy in what I have with Jesus. It helps me stay humble.
@SalinasSJ11 sjearthquakes.com
If you walked around downtown San Jose in the month of September or went to Philz for a cup of coffee, you may have been standing next to Vincent Kartheiser – best known for playing the falsely-confident Pete Campbell on AMC’s “Mad Men.” Even if you are a “Mad Men” fanatic, it might have been hard to tell it was him. Vincent traded his perfectly-pressed suits for a more relaxed look in his role as Sebastian Justice in the world premiere of Jonathan Marc Feldman’s “The Death of the Novel.” We caught up with Vincent at San Jose Rep to talk about his acting roles – as well as life, death, and compassion.
Interview and Photography by daniel Garcia Assisted by Gavin Duffy
You started out in children’s theater. Is that something your mom dragged you to, or how did that come about?
No, my sister was an actress, and I ran on stage during one of her shows. The director said, “you can’t do that…but you can come and audition.” So I started auditioning and, once I started doing the shows and classes, it became a big part of my life as a young person. You are lucky if you can find something that you have fun doing. Whether it’s sports or art or something, because school is pretty tedious and it’s nice to have something to look forward to after that.
From that point, were you pretty much on that trajectory? Or did you ever think you wanted to be something else?
When I was six, I wanted to be a tow truck driver, which I thought was the coolest job in the world. But no, once I started acting...it was less a choice of what I wanted to become, and more a choice of what I was becoming...and what I was.
Who are some of the people that influenced you?
They are Minnesota actors. A guy named Gerry Drake who I still talk to. Byron Johnson and other actors as well. All of them are working actors and people that love putting on shows. Most people probably think of actors and actresses that live in LA or NY, but there are actors and actresses in every city. And all those cities are filled with actors who have very meaningful and important roles in society. So that is who I grew up idolizing and wanting to be like. Everything else that has happened in my career has been the next logical step for me to take. But sometimes I wish I could go back and accomplish some dreams that I once had, instead of some of the dreams I chose to chase.
What were some of those dreams?
Well, I would say to be in a company of theatre actors in a small town – like in Kansas City, for example. You know, places like that. Where there is less pressure on you, less eyeballs on you. I love my job, I love Mad Men. It’s the best job I’ve ever had as an actor; and as an artist, it has been the most fulfilling work. The writing I get to perform is phenomenal, and I wouldn’t trade it in for anything. But I think there is always a tendency as a human being to long for the other side…
The simpler life?
If you have the simpler life, you have the more extraordinary life. Sometimes I have
“I LIK e SJ. I t HI n K I t’ S I nte R e S t I n G . So M e t HI n GS a R e W e IR d. I M ean, t H e R e a R e t H e
B e S t BIK e R oad S t H at I’ V e S een an YWH e R e… B ut e V e RYone IS RI d I n G on t H e SI de Wa LK . W H at’ S t H e dea L WI t H t H at?”
those longings to go do a few plays a year, and no one really cares who you are up there. You can really inhabit the character. You don’t have to spend the first couple of scenes trying to get people to forget that you are Pete Campbell. You can dive right into the character on the first breath. That idea of being in a show and not worrying about how it is going to affect your reputation – because you don’t have one. It really affects me when people spend their hard earned money and it doesn’t live up to their expectations.
Ultimately, actors are trying to fulfill a writer’s vision and a director’s inspiration and expectation. And so, we are always trying to fulfill someone else’s needs and wants. It’s who we are at the core. If you are not one of those types of people, you may still be good at acting, but you’ll be in the minority of actors; because most of us are people pleasers. We want to give the people what they want…really, really bad. It’s really important to us.
What have you learned about yourself playing your different roles – Pete, Sebastian, Conner? As you inhabit those other characters, what has awakened you to different ideas and thoughts?
I think, with Pete Campbell, I’m always surprised about the things I’m willing to excuse about him. I guess that means I probably excuse them about myself, too. But I’m defensive about him. I don’t know,
maybe that means I have a loose moral compass. But it’s not necessarily the kind of job where you learn a ton about yourself while you are playing these characters – at least I haven’t. I learn a ton about myself through taking on a challenge that seems insurmountable. They say that the energy in a dressing room is the same as the energy in a plane before it is going down. And what I’ve learned is facing a big fear about myself – the fear of failure, public embarrassment, the fear of underachieving – and finding the ability to go out there, regardless.
“The Death of the Novel” has a lot of themes about loss and death. What are your thoughts about death and loss and life?
I think people are very detached from death in the Western world. I think we hardly ever see dead people until they have been drained of their blood, pumped full of fake things and painted. I think we fear elderly people because they represent death. We fear death because we are generations away from being one with it. We don’t accept it, and it’s kind of sad because it is the other side of life. And it is scary, but it is really beautiful. It is important that we accept the fact that we will go away and that we will disintegrate, – and we don’t. So it sets people into a position where they fear it, because they don’t know anything about it. How can you go through life pretending that that’s not something to face? It’s the only thing we have to face, really…
Does that give you the courage to go out and challenge yourself?
The challenges I have taken on have allowed me to look at death more clearly – because that is the ultimate challenge, to accept our fate. It’s the most holy experience next to being born. Have you seen people pass? It is very holy. It is a very profound experience: living and dying. And we neglect it.
How do you deal with fame? Now that you have fame and notoriety, what do you see has changed about your perspective of life?
It’s a big question that’s hard to answer because you don’t know what would have changed between 26 and 35 years old. If you don’t change, you aren’t doing something right. There’s a disconnect that comes from being in the public eye. Fortunately, I’m surrounded by great people in my life. They are super proud of me. And they also know it is lucky. I don’t think I am a terrible actor, but I have friends that are way better actors than I am. You know, especially TV and film – it is a lottery.
There are hundreds of thousands of people that want these jobs, but it’s a perfect storm to be the one that gets picked. You have to count your blessings. Having people around me that recognize my luck and my talent…it helps. I don’t disrespect anyone that is on my TV show, but we are all extremely lucky to be there. We are all talented, and they have earned their way there. No one gets there by pure luck, but no one gets there by pure hard work either. It takes a miracle, and they all know that. No one feels like they are entitled to their position in life. We feel blessed.
So what is “success” for you?
If I could be a more compassionate person all of the time, I would consider myself a more successful human. I fail all the time. It’s like it is impossible to do. I just have to keep working harder at it. Success is something that no matter what it is, it is unachievable. If your goal is to have more money or fame or to be a good father or son , whatever it might be, you are always failing. You are never 100% the man you want to be. You are never 100% compassionate. In that same way, you will never be 100% famous. There will always be someone smarter and better and richer than you. It’s just about realizing that you are never going to have complete success in any of those areas. It’s a striving for perfection, not demand for it. I’d like to be successful at striving to be compassionate.
What does compassion look like to you?
It means understanding someone else’s point of view. [Instead of judging], I should show compassion and try to see from their position how they got to that place in life, and what is important to them, and understand that my past is very different than theirs. I think sometimes I start to think that my way is the right way – so I just try to have compassion.
You mentioned compassion. Do you have something that you want to be able to do with your life, now that you have some notoriety?
I have an uncle, a great man, and every time I see him, he never asks me how I am doing, or where I am succeeding. He says “how are you giving back?” Not with money or a name, but “how are you as an individual giving back?” I don’t have a platform that I want to promote and put my name behind, but there are things in life that I want to put my energy behind.
See Vincent Kartheiser in AMC’s “Mad Men”
roy sakelson
local author
As the proud father of two wonderful kids, I love to read to them in the evenings. Over the years, we’ve read fairy tales, adventures, fables, poetry, mysteries, fantasy, and more. Sometimes, when we couldn’t find a suitable book, my kids would ask me to make up my own stories. Out of this came Gwendolyn and the Seeds of destiny, which I gave to my daughter on her eighth birthday. More recently, my son turned eight, and I wrote Aethelred and the Wand of Woe. It is a sequel, though it can be read on its own.
If your kids love reading about dragons, secret passages, trolls, riddles, lost treasure, sea monsters, and two particularly brave children, you might consider adding these stories to your bookshelf.
Roy Sakelson lives with his wife, two kids, and a cat in San Jose.
roysakelson.com
Cover art by Megan Eckman
Gwendolyn and the Seeds of Destiny
“… Gwendolyn heard a sound unlike anything she had ever heard before. It was a savage roar that shook her very bones. An instant later, cries could be heard from the ramparts and surrounding town. Suddenly, an explosion rocked the castle. Then another. Polonius and the children fell to the floor as the books tumbled on top of them.
Things moved very quickly after that. The children could smell smoke and sulphur in the air as the walls shook and cracked. Before they could utter a word, Polonius scrambled to his feet and swept aside his oak desk like it was a toy. The next moment, he pulled up the large rug on which it sat, revealing a trap door underneath.
Gwendolyn stared in wonder. A trap door? Why had she never known about that? But there was no time to think. A third explosion shook the room, sending Aethelred flying through the air where he hit the fireplace and lay still. A second later, an avalanche of stone fell towards him as part of the ceiling above him collapsed. “No!” Gwendolyn screamed, reaching her hands up as if to stop it.
She felt a strange and powerful sensation flow through her body. It was if her desire to protect her brother had kindled an intense heat in her chest, spilling down her arms into her hands and fingers as she continued to scream. The next moment, the stones above her brother’s head burst into small pebbles, harmlessly scattering about him. Though Aethelred remained still, he had not been crushed. Gwendolyn sighed and looked at her tutor. He stared back at her in amazement.
Then she heard another roar. This time, however, it was deafening, as if its source was between her ears. She looked up through the hole in the ceiling and saw something she could not immediately comprehend. Two great wings blotted out the light followed by the swish of a massive tail, which brought with it a horrible stench. Overwhelmed by the noise, Gwendolyn dimly saw her tutor yelling and motioning to her. Unfortunately, she couldn’t understand him. Every instinct urged her to run but she would not abandon her brother. The dark wings rose up again and then she saw the beast’s great head thrust itself towards her.
A dragon’s head.”
Aethelred and the Wand of Woe
“A dark line about three feet long suddenly appeared in the air directly in front of him. The line grew thicker, becoming a seam, and slowly expanded. Soon, it was a dark, two-dimensional square growing larger by the second. Then, in the middle of the square, a figure materialized. It was a portrait of a boy surrounded by darkness—a boy with fair skin and wild, red hair. The boy’s expression looked stern, even a bit cruel. The boy’s eyes blinked. To his astonishment, Aethelred realized that the face was his own. He was staring into a mirror. But what did it mean? He raised his eyes and looked at Gwendolyn and Kindle. They stared back at him in shock.
“Aethelred, what did you do?” asked Gwendolyn angrily, sliding off Kindle’s back and walking toward him.
The size of the black mirror continued to grow. It was now almost as tall as the dragon. Aethelred looked back at his reflection and the enormous abyss that seemed to surround him in the mirror. He looked so small, he thought. So lonely. Why couldn’t they recognize that he wanted to use this power to help them?
“I don’t understand,” he said, softly. He reached out and touched the surface of the mirror. It rippled as if he had disturbed a still pond. Instantly, his reflection vanished. Confused, he touched it again, and his fingers disappeared into the black surface. Before he could pull his hand out again, however, he felt something cold and wet grab his wrist and pull him in further.”
Selected excerpts provided by author.
Photography
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the evolution of a San Jose Institution and its chef Scott Cooper Le Papillon
Written by Mary Matlack
Photography by daniel Garcia
What do you do when you’re a kid who likes to eat and you’ve got a mom who doesn’t really cook? For Scott Cooper, executive chef at Le Papillon, you learn to cook. “Basically, I just like to eat,” chuckles Cooper. “Mom didn’t really cook very much, so – eat or starve: I don’t do starve.” Fortunately for Cooper, he liked cooking. In 1977 when he was in junior high school, his step-father Mike Mashayekh opened Le Papillon, a fine dining establishment perfectly poised for success in the heyday of Continental Cuisine and the high-tech boom.
Saltimbocca, veal picatta, boeuf Bourguignon, food prepared table-side, ceasar salad and wilted spinach salad – Le Papillon served some of the best Continental Cuisine in the valley and people came for the show, the predictability and, of course, the Grand Marnier Soufflé.
When Cooper was in high school, he took his love for cooking and went to work at their sister restaurant, La Foret, in historic New Almaden. As family, Cooper was given the best job in the house. “I started as a dishwasher. Then pantry, then cook, then busboy...then back to cook. My senior year in high school, I realized that I really enjoyed cooking. So that’s when I started being somewhat serious about it, wanting to learn how to cook.”
For eight years, Cooper worked at La Foret. “Starting as the guy who slices mushrooms, then they let you be the guy who gets to maybe work the grill, then the guy who sets up plates, then the guy who sautées. Work your way up. That’s kind of how it always works. Everybody needs to start at the bottom. I think that’s important.”
When asked about cooking schools today and the training they provide, he drives home the importance of starting at the beginning. “You get a lot of people now because the schools are so popular, which is nice because they’re more educated. They have an understanding of what it means to cook, but they still start at the very bottom. You don’t know anything about working in a restaurant until you’ve worked in a restaurant. School is a quicker way to get a good working knowledge but...you don’t start any higher than somebody with zero experience.”
design, changing things if I wanted to, with some reins,” says Cooper. And in 1992, when the time was right, he moved over to Le Papillon as the Executive Chef.
Cooper describes Le Papillon’s cuisine today as Contemporary French. “We’ve been evolving steadily. I traveled to France, Italy and Spain – two straight up eating tours where I did nothing but travel from restaurant to restaurant and pick out our itinerary based on all the great restaurants. I was very inspired by that.”
Bay Area fine dining was evolving in the 90’s as well. “The food world at that time was sort of post-nouvelle cuisine,” says Cooper. “It was, by today’s standards, kind of boring, actually. A lot of people were doing the same thing. There was the whole Chez Panisse model going on at that point. Ingredients were getting a lot better. We went from getting pretty lousy ingredients to starting to work with farmers. It wasn’t the golden age, but it was the beginning of it.”
At La Foret, Cooper worked his way up to number two which meant that he occasionally got to be the chef. “For two nights a week I was basically running the whole thing, doing my own specials, the cooking of it, the
As it evolved, Cooper’s style has traveled the world with French cooking as a base. “We were very French for awhile – sort of modern French, lighter, more vegetables, more seafood. That’s when products started getting better. Seafood started becoming more available – not just the standard things, but a much greater variety. The produce...especially around here.”
When Cooper took an extended honeymoon in Asia, he fell in love with the ingredients. He says, “A lot of Asian ingredients sort of found their way into our kitchen. Ten to fifteen years ago we used to serve a straightup sashimi dish – I mean very classical – and I loved it. Nothing wrong with great sashimi, but now we might do something more interesting. The first course tasting menu right now is scallops – raw, just marinated with a little yuzu, a little lemon pressed oil and a little white soy. They keep their nice pristine color – with puffed rice, pickled myoga ginger blossom, some seaweed puree. So it’s less classical and when you look at it, you’re not going to say, ‘oh, I could have this is at a sushi bar.’ But a lot of the flavors are from the Japanese culture.”
As Cooper has guided the evolution of the menu offerings at Le Papillon, the heart of the restaurant has remained steady. It’s a place of calm, quiet elegance with soft colors, impeccably modern floral arrangements and a European sensibility enveloped by a sophisticated level of service. Like most
fine restaurants in the South Bay, Le Papillon sees mostly business diners during the week and locals on the weekend. “We are definitely getting younger clientele than we did, say ten to fifteen years ago, and I hope it’s a reflection on us a little bit. That we are not, you know, old,” Cooper says. “It’s definitely a reflection on the world at large – okay, especially the Bay Area – I don’t know if it’s this way in Dayton, but people know much more about food. There’s lots of food media out there.
People are much more conscious than they were 25 years ago. Back then, nobody really knew anything. It was a magic door and food just came through. It was a scene and everybody was dressed up – they wore tuxedos and they cooked at your table.”
Cooper doesn’t wear a tuxedo. He’s the real thing in his chef’s whites, crisp and clean. His sensible shoes and calm mannerism relay a feeling of confidence. This is a man who
actually gets to step away from his kitchen every now and then – thanks to his dedicated staff. “The older I get, the more my job turns into developing them to execute things without me. From then on, to help them develop their own style and open their own restaurants.”
Up the chain – that’s the progression each cook has to follow. And the beauty in his dishes reveals more than just a practitioner. There’s an artist at work – precise, working in miniature with color, texture and as a culinary artist – flavor, perhaps the most precise and quixotic material of all. And he does it as if he’s done it all his life – because he has, from the bottom to the top.
Local
Lineup
Fill your reusable grocery bag with the good stuff: made right here
Words and shopping by Mary Matlack & Gillian claus
Photography by daniel Garcia
Schurra’s chocolate
Sweet teeth have known the secret for eons. Chocolate is what makes the Mexican mole so dark and keeps the s’mores together by the campfire. Handmade chocolate since 1912, Schurra’s treats are an institution sure to have the supporting cast for all your chocolate fantasies. Available at their shop on The Alameda, online and at the San Jose Airport, gate 10.
840 The Alameda San Jose, CA 95126 schurrasfineconfections.com
Barefoot coffee
Would you even be awake enough to read all the way to the back of this magazine without it? A friend of open eyelids worldwide, Barefoot Coffee is pure poetry – right down to their Haiku Espresso. You can visit their Roastery on Sunol Street in San Jose and try a few cups for yourself.
Zanotto’s Family Markets, barefootcoffee.com
RW Garcia Tortilla chips and crackers – salty, crunchy things taste good. Especially healthy salty things! Unfettered by GMO, and all natural makes them guilt-free. A perfect partner for guacamole or solo snacking, these San Jose originals have earned a worldwide fan base.
As the days grow shorter, the beer glasses grow taller. Yeah, you really should find the right glass to appreciate the colors of this autumnal treat. No worries. In a pinch, you can always drink it from its versatile container, brewed and bottled right here in Japantown.
Gordon Biersch has a seasonal brew to go with just about anything on your harvest table.
Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant: 33 East San Fernando Street San Jose, CA 95113 gordonbiersch.com
neto’s Sausage Oh, sausages! Loved by our barbecues and our buns would be lonely without them. For three generations, these sausages have been made in Santa Clara. Stop by their market and grill to pick up fresh Italian and Portuguese sausages as well as we specialty ingredients from across the globe. Be sure to go hungry – the sausage burger is famously filling.
Neto’s Market & Grill 1313 Franklin Street Santa Clara, CA 95050 netosmarketandgrill.com
a new album Helps You Help the community, twice over the sound of her Voice
Written by Richard Faulk
We can agree that homelessness is a bad thing but local bands are kind of awesome. Yes? So cheers to a new music compilation that allows you to combat the former while supporting the latter.
“The Sound of Her Voice” is a collection of songs from Bay Area bands featuring female vocalists. It was released by RadioActiveSJ, an association of San Jose-based industry insiders, who are donating the profits to InnVision, a nonprofit organization that annually serves more that 25,000 homeless or at-risk people in the Silicon Valley.
Women singers hold the stage, but if this is indie “women’s music,” it’s remarkably like the plain old kind. Across the twenty tracks, an androgynous eclecticism reigns.
Lia Rose’s twangy contralto has a superficial resemblance to Zooey Dechanel’s – but an infectious jangley chorus makes “The Last Mountain” a standout. The SHE’s’ homage to ’60s girl groups is gimmicky but charming. And the past is also mined creatively by Ash Reiter, who puts the story of Ishi, the lonely survivor of the Yahi tribe and onetime Berkeley resident, into the form of an anguished teenage ballad reminiscent of the Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel.”
(Special Bay Area points also go to The Corner Laughers for “Transamerica Pyramid,” whose twee mannerisms sound exactly like an audio rendering of Peeps candy.)
Those sensitive to stereotyping may wince at several dream-rock tracks populated with throbbing hearts and swans and languid drift-
ings across the midnight sky. But if you want a good wallow – and who doesn’t sometimes? – Doe Eye’s “I Hate You” should suit.
On the other extreme, veteran riot grrrls won’t find the next Bikini Kill here, but they might resonate with the hip-hop tracks from k.flay and Vida Killz, the album’s most confrontational artists.
The variety of sounds and perspectives gathered together proves that The Sound of her Voice – and Bay Area music – is more than a one-note offering.
RadioactiveSJ is composed of:
Ed Maxwell (Local Bay Area Music)
Barbara Wahli (Barb Rocks)
Kendall Sallay (Cartoon Bar Fight)
Amulya datla (Blacklight Findings) dan Vado (SLG Publishing Art Boutiki)
Download the album or individual tracks at radioactivesj.bandcamp.com
COLLEGE RADIO
Student-run, underground radio? What could possibly go right about that? I don’t want to hear 45 minutes of Tibetan bells, and no, I don’t want another run through of the George Harrison back-catalog. To reference a Tom Hanks cliché: College radio is like a box of chocolates; you really never can tell what you’re going to get.
KScu & KSJS: an evaluation of college Radio, Local Music, and chocolate
So may we all be grateful that our South Bay college radio stations, namely KSCU (103.3 FM) and KSJS (90.5 FM), are not jelly-filled, they don’t taste like plastic, and there’s absolutely no coconut. KSCU and KSJS are the truffles in a great box of chocolates.
KScu
Based out of Santa Clara University and housed on the FM Station 103.3, KSCU has been around, in one form or another, for over 50 years. Affectionately described by one listener as, “An old-ish dog with a few tricks left up his sleeve,” KSCU never fails to deliver on its variety programming calendar. From The Dandy Warhols and Bassnectar to Ceremony or Norah Jones, KSCU programmers will keep you confused and entertained. And what would a college radio station be without an informative and interactive website, complete with an online signal stream? Hopping on to KSCU’s website quickly demonstrates the station’s support of local music and arts. Several KSCU programmers mix in handfuls of their favorite local artists and the station’s website has submission information placed conveniently on the landing page, practically calling local bands to send in their material for consideration.
KSCU works hard to reach their audience, even beyond the stretch of their own airwaves, as evidenced by their presence at local music events. Wander over to KSCU’s Facebook page where their seemingly daily ticket giveaways demonstrate an authentic appreciation for music and a desire to share that music with their audience. Not enough can be said about the need for the arts to
Written by andrew Kutsenda
cross-promote themselves, and KSCU’s aggressive backing of local music and culture is enough to merit support.
Like any college station, you will occasionally suffer through an unsharpened DJ, or a poorly selected B side. But if you can make it through the influx of ever-changing new talent, the bounty of great musical material is well worth the wait.
KSJS
An exclusively student run, free-form college radio station, KSJS (90.5 FM) comes with high acclaim. Twice recognized by The National Association of College Broadcasters as “Station of the Year,” San Jose truly has a lush vine with far reaching tendrils growing in its own backyard. Indeed, KSJS is no stranger to the spotlight and has helped propel the careers of former San Jose State alumni and KSJS DJs:
Kim Vestal (KRTY – San Jose)
Craig Bowers (KGO-AM – San Francisco)
Steve Scott (WCBS-AM – New York City)
Mark Nieto (KMVW-FM – San Francisco)
Lynn Gold (KLIV – San Jose)
Tony Kovaleski (NBC-TV – Bay Area)
Once a small-time signal capable of delivering only an 85 watt broadcast, KSJS has grown into a 1500 watt college radio station juggernaut, reaching all of the Santa Clara Valley and much of the San Francisco Peninsula. Like KSCU, KSJS has done an incredible job of supporting local artists and its local arts community. Recent articles by station representatives highlighting regionally-acclaimed artists Rin Tin Tiger and Tumbleweed Wanderers deserve recognition, as well as KSJS’s most recent CD review and support of budding San Jose star, electronic dance producer Manitix.
Beyond its support of the local arts, KSJS leads its programming charge with an unparalleled jazz catalog. Tune in on any particular day and you’re likely to hear anything from fusion and free jazz to swing, bebop and so much more. Classic as well as current, KSJS
provides insightful jazz programming for the eager ear. Supplemental to their Tuesday evening, Friday afternoon, and Sunday morning jazz programs, be sure to check out “The Creative Source” every Sunday from 10 AM to 2 PM hosted by Brad Stone, recent recipient of the 2012 Programmer of the Year award by JazzWeek.
KSJS also boasts an impressive collection of Electronic, Sub-Rock, Urban, and Alternativo En Espanol. Their website, ksjs.org, has complete program listings as well as prior playlists and upcoming events. So the next time your Top 40 station plays Carly Rae Jepsen one too many times, spin the nob, punch the button, or click the link and be thankful for the subverting and sensational underground sounds of KSJS.
KSJS: 90.5 FM www.ksjs.org
KSCU: 103.3 FM www.kscu.org
APRIL HALBERSTADT
April has been a resident of Naglee Park since 1973. She is a research historian with ten books published on topics ranging from railroad depots and vintage tractors to bungalows- her current project is a history of Naglee Park. She is married with four children and four grand-children. April attended CSU Hayward, which was affectionately known as Hay U.
SCOTT MACDONALD
Scott left the world of daily photojournalism in 2011 to focus on shooting weddings, editorial and commercial work. In his spare time, he likes to ride his bike, play drums in his punk rock band, hike in the redwoods, enjoy a nice craft beer and spend time with his wife Amber. scottmacdonaldphotography.com
AUDRE VAN BROERS
BOLO Vintage launched in 2011 by Bay Area fashion photographer, Audre, and model friend, Jordon. BOLO Vintage contributes a profit of all their sales to charity and stay’s active in their community. BOLO delivers a breath of fresh air to the vintage community, both with bold visuals and stunning collections. audrevanbroers.com
JUAN PABLO COSTANZO
A native of Uruguay, JP has more than 14 years of diverse experience as an art director and lifestyle photographer. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Graphic Design from the Universidad ORT del Uruguay and lives in midtown San Jose, CA with his wife, Andrea, and their two sons, Matteo and Joaquin. costanzophotography.com
CHRIS VICKERY
Chris is the Product Content Manager at a software company on the peninsula and has been known to write fiction in-between user manuals. A Bay Area native, he attended the first MLS game at Spartan Stadium in 1996, and many since. Chris plays soccer in a rec league, where he is widely acknowledged as having a shockingly poor first touch.
RICHARD FAULK
Richard is a freelance writer and editor. A onetime time-travel columnist and occasional education reporter, he has also written about Vikings for Australian tweens, covered academic conferences for Columbia University, and celebrated the films of Pam Grier in Penthouse. His first book, Gross America, will be released in October by Penguin books.
The production of Content Magazine would not be possible without the talented writers, editors, graphic artists, and photographers who contribute to each issue. We thank you and are proud to provide a publication to display your work. We are also thankful for the sponsors and readers who have supported this magazine through advertisements and subscriptions.
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SEAN LOPEZ
Sean is a part-time fisherman, home brewer, and bread maker. Full-time design grinder, beer drinker, and husband. Sean juggles between the many interests, hobbies, and professions which keeps his curiosity intrigued. Named after the infamous “Sir Connery,” he has no resemblance (height or otherwise) to the original double-oh-seven. lopezfarms.com
FLORA MORENO DE THOMPSON
Flora is a writer and editor for Content Magazine. A proud San Josean, Flora is a San Jose Sharks season ticket holder and San Jose Bike Party regular. She is addicted to coffee and her two dogs, Lord Stanley and Little Joe. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and writing about herself in the third person. jeffreyandflora.com
