San Jose: The city America forgot

[KamaAina]

http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_29628346/san-jose-city-america-forgot

San Jose, the self-proclaimed Capital of Silicon Valley, looms little in American minds, according to a recent analysis by the statistical news outlet FiveThirtyEight. The publication named San Jose the "most forgettable major American city."...

Why must San Jose play the Jan Brady to San Francisco's Marcia, the Splenda to San Francisco's sugar?...

Think of someplace you want to go, then imagine someplace four hours away. That's San Jose....

"We've kicked some slogans around," Liccardo said, "but really we're just hoping Dionne Warwick will go on another world tour."

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

[Throd]

1. If there is anything exciting in San Jose, I have yet to see it.

I'm not there very often, but as I drive around I am amazed by the blandness.

[Baobab]

2. There is an excellent breakfast place right near the winchester mystery house

[KamaAina]

3. Wow! An excellent breakfast place? Maybe I'll stick around after all!

[Baobab]

5. Good point!

n/t

[KamaAina]

4. Looks like we may be the most forgettable city in the world!

Or at least the Western Hemisphere.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018847967#post88

I thought she was talking about San Jose, *Costa Rica* . I was going to send her a map of Central America with "San Jose" circled

[KamaAina]

6. Our go-to columnist weighs in

he's really the only one; there was another but she left to take a job at a nonprofit!

http://www.mercurynews.com/scott-herhold/ci_29636722/herhold-forgettable-san-jose-fuhgeddaboudit

So we are now officially forgotten, consigned to the Robinson Crusoe's island of popular memory. A web story on fivethirtyeight.com, a statistical news outlet, has branded San Jose the most forgettable city in America. We might as well pack it in, right? Huddle down in self-pity?...

(I'm reminded of one of my favorite statistical tropes from three decades ago. San Jose used to be regularly named as the safest city for pedestrians in America. What the study's authors didn't take into account was that we had comparatively few pedestrians for our size: People were in cars.)...

To me, there's an element of protesting too much in all this. San Jose does not need to be a world-class city to serve its residents well. We do not need to rival San Francisco. We clearly have many things to improve. But we should stop apologizing for what we are.

It helps to understand that in the total scope of things, San Jose is still an adolescent as a city. It's more accurate to describe it as a city of 100,000 people and a suburb of nearly 900,000 more. It sometimes acts like a teenager who finds his or her jeans 2 feet short after a growth spurt.