Why does San Jose seems less well known than other California cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego?

*seem

Because nobody knows the fucking way to get there! I've been asking for 53 God damn years and still no one's told me!

Does it have a GOP major? It’s also the largest city in America without fluoride in its water

Because Gertrude Stein's observation about Oakland now applies to San Jose...

It's a suburban sprawlburg with no culture or real identity.

It’s not a very pretty or exciting place to be, honestly. I’ve been twice for work, and I hate it.

fuck y'all

I luvs it

Because the only reason to go to San Jose was the Water Garden bath house. Now that it is permanently closed, why bother with San Jose?

[quote] why bother with San Jose?

The Winchester Mystery House, whore!

Complete vote of a place. It’s only a city because computer companies are there

San Jose is no San Diego .

Megalopolis Syndrome. It's just part of San Francisco now, just like Oakland, Palo Alto, and Sunnyvale.

Philly has a similar identity problem. And hell, it was once the biggest & richest city in the entire US.

Baltimore's identity problem is even worse. Baltimore isn't "DC", but it's no less-DC than Arlington or Tysons Corner.

As far as anyone not from Texas is concerned, Fort Worth is as "Dallas" as Plano.

I have an aunt whose family had a dairy farm outside San Jose when she was growing up and which is now tract homes. As I look down while the plane circles before it lands at SJC, I always think of something she said (and she was talking about the 1950's)

"San Francisco was the place you'd go to have some fun. San Jose was the place you'd go if you ran out of vacuum cleaner bags."

Because it is part of the Bay Area, and San Francisco is the famous place in the bay area.

San Francisco is the capital of Silicon Valley now.

San Jose was not always a large city. It was always an unmemorable small city, which people in San Francisco would joke about. It is only since the tech companies moved there, that it became a large(r) city, but San Francisco is still "The City" of the bay area.

Prunedale. As Herb Caen said, San Jose and similar suburbs like Sunnyvale or Milpitas are like Los Angeles suburbs that somehow floated north. It was not that long ago that it was a small town. It is still difficult to make out their downtown as there are few tall buildings. It does still seem like a bedroom community to me.

It had under 100,000 people as recently as 1950.

Because it’s a boring suburb with no culture.

It's actually an old city, formerly the state capitol and it has some interesting books and crannies, but, yeah, it's mostly a mini LA overshadowed by the smaller, but more glamorous and ur an San Francisco.

It’s insane that San Jose has not allowed great density and high rises. There is absolutely no reason for it to be low density - it should be like downtown Dallas. NIMBYs in Silicon Valley need to be overruled by the government.

I went to Zillow to see what all these million dollar homes look like and WTF? I understand the effect of supply and demand on housing prices, but $1.4 million for shit like this:

She ain't no Modesto, that's for sure.

Exactly R22 - which is why I think residents’ fight to “preserve” that housing is ridiculous. Knock down the 70s cardboard box and build 4 townhouses at least - if not a condo building.

It does have great Vietnamese food.

It’s a god damn roasting hot hell hole. Second only to shithole STOCKTON

It’s like Irvine without the charm.

The downtown can't grow tall because it's in the flight path of the airport. I used to live in the Bay Area and I was shocked at how boring San Jose was, especially since it is so expensive.

I am from San Jose. There are some nice older neighborhoods (Willow Glen, Rose Garden) but it's otherwise unremarkable and boring. The weather is good though.

At least Stockton has some funky, skanky charm. It is unapologetically low rent, yet has an incredibly diverse (and cheap) food scene. It is starting to become gentrified, of course, sadly. San Jose wishes it was that interesting. It has nothing going for it, bad or good.

The weather is good in San Jose? Are you Satan?

r17 Prunedale is an actual town, a ways south of SJ.

[quote]R17 Prunedale

In California we call that Prunetucky.

[quote]In California we call that Prunetucky.

Phrase makers.

WhoahWhoahWhoahWhoahWhoahWhoahWhoahWhoahWhoahWhoah

I live in San Jose and it's definitely not the most amazing city but it's 100x better than Stockton, don't be ridiculous

I lived there in 1974--when I first got out of college and started my first job. Back then, you could buy a decent condo for only $30K. Of course salaries were much lower there and I couldn't even afford that. My 1BR apt just north of downtown was $125/mo.

R31, I am aware of that. Many people from the East Bay (mostly Berkeley) referred to the AREA as “Prunedale” in the 1950s and 1960s. There was not much there. Again, as others have pointed out, the population of San Jose proper was around 100,000. Compared to Berkeley/Oakland it was the sticks.

I’ve lived in SJ all my life & it’s wonderful, great quality of life, unbeatable weather, but its bland, quiet, very little culture. It’s the epitome of a (very large) suburb. The cost of housing is atrocious, I don’t know how younger people can afford to live here, unless they’re in tech. We bought our house for $54,000 back in the mid-70s, my grandparents bought theirs for half that about 10 yrs previous. Now both houses are worth well over a million, basic starter homes, no major improvements. We also have a burgeoning homelessness problem, they’re cropping up everywhere you look. I was at the credit union ATM a couple days ago & a homeless man collapsed & passed out almost at my feet.

r37 I actually grew up in the East Bay in the 1950s--literally right next to Oakland and Berkeley--and never heard any use the term Prunedale. We did used to mention that fact that there were extensive prune orchards in the area -- and of course there was the Pruneyard in Campbell. We had relatives in Cupertino, and I never heard them mention it either.

Same here, R39. Whatevs.

r21, airport flight path aside, the big problem with skyscrapers in San Jose isn't NIMBYs, it's economics.

1. The only relatively-undeveloped part of San Jose is the low-lying mud flats along the Bay.

2. Florida-style dredge & fill construction (for waterfront single-family and townhouse construction) isn't possible in California. Every time there's an earthquake, the vibration shuffles around the grains of sand, dirt, and pebbles & causes it to settle. At best, you eventually end up with expensive foundation damage. At worst, the structure catastrophically collapses during a major earthquake. The only type of buildings you COULD build on that land are literal skyscrapers, sitting on pilings that extend down to the bedrock PLUS all the extra anchoring and mass-dampening skyscrapers in seismic areas require.

3. Skyscrapers are really, really expensive per square foot. Like, 4-16 times the cost per square foot of a single-family home. Even when land is expensive, there aren't many areas where economics alone make skyscrapers cost-effective relative to dense-but-cheaper residential housing forms like narrow townhouses (where you get the benefits of cheaper construction, the density of low-rise condos, and the added privacy & property values of (sort of) single-family homes where you own everything from soil to sky within your lot's small-but-exclusive footprint.

4. In normal cities, the downtown's waterfront is the one area where it makes economic sense to build a few residential skyscrapers. Even 30 years ago, Miami had impressive lines of skyscrapers along Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The catch in San Jose is, eastern San Francisco Bay smells like rotting garbage, and it's really not much to look at. If you're rich enough to afford a penthouse in Silicon Valley, you're rich enough to afford a house on the side of a hill.

So... in light of problems 1 to 4, the only way San Jose can really densify is if existing single-family neighborhoods get bought, demolished, and redeveloped... and for THAT to happen, you have to get past the impenetrable wall of NIMBYs. The one place where the NIMBYs are semi-ambivalent about new development (the waterfront) is too expensive (even by Bay Area standards) relative to the people who'd actually want to live there. A shitty 3/2 ranch house straight out of the 1970s might cost $1.3 million... but it's still a lot bigger, more desirable, and more convenient than a shitty 900sf 2B/1.5b condo that doesn't even include deeded parking spaces in the garage & would cost almost as much.

San Jose's problem is kind of like Brasilia's... the city isn't as big or dense as it "ought" to be (to optimally house everyone who wants to live there, at a cost they can halfway afford), but any changes made to increase the size or density would objectively diminish the quality of life for everyone who already lives there... and those residents have veto power they aren't the least bit hesitant to use in order to preserve THEIR OWN quality of life. In Brasilia's case, the city's planners literally went out of their way to make it "impossible" for more than ~500,000 people to live there by creating artificial corners, then intentionally painting themselves into them. In San Jose's case, the corners were more unintentional and organic (basically, tall mountains and a seismically-unstable bay hemming them in), but the outcome was basically the same.

It was rural until long after the other cities developed their colorful histories. When I was a kid along for the ride with my family from SF to Santa Cruz, it was nothing but a bunch of dusty orchards.

It's suburban, not urban. It's urban center is newer, not historic like SF, SD, or LA

The downtown is small

It is inland and although not a huge distance from the coast it's separated by a mountain range

There is no there there

It's not horrible, but its no SF, LA, or SD

Apart from Silicon Valley and the wealthy small towns and suburbs, there's not much to make the area notable.

You can really breathe in San Jose. They've got a lot of space. There'll be a place where I can stay.

Its name means “Saint Jose.”

San Jose is so basic and unattractive. It is insane that the little tract house my husband lived in there as a child is worth almost $3 million now.

OP San Jose is a suburb of San Francisco. San Francisco is one of the most famous cities IN. THE. WORLD. Even if SF is small, it will always eclipse San Jose like Los Angeles eclipses Long Beach.

Baltimore, Philly and even Oakland have more clear identities than San Jose.

[quote]San Jose's problem is kind of like Brasilia's... the city isn't as big or dense as it "ought" to be (to optimally house everyone who wants to live there, at a cost they can halfway afford), but any changes made to increase the size or density would objectively diminish the quality of life for everyone who already lives there... and those residents have veto power they aren't the least bit hesitant to use in order to preserve THEIR OWN quality of life.

That's not a problem, that's a strength. There is no reason a municipality should have to accommodate every loser who shows up and wants to live there. Same problem with the entire state. Guys, you're out of water. The answer is really clear. No new residential construction. Not for a long, long time. As old housing is taken out of service, buh-bye to it. Don't replace it. Because you're out of water.

The Central Valley of California feeds our nation. California does not need more affordable housing. It needs more farm land and plenty of water to irrigate it. If people forced to exit almighty California and live in Nevada, no one cares.

Even though it's larger San Jose is a suburb of San Francisco. In 1950 San Jose didn't even have 100,000 people. It was merely a center for agricultural goods. This is the same way Virginia Beach is the largest city in Virginia but it's really a suburb of Norfolk.

San Jose has always been a town to drive through on the way to somewhere else. Either down 101 heading south toward LA and Disneyland or heading west on 92 toward Santa Cruz. When I was a kid in the early '60s, San Jose was a whole lot a fuck nothing. And it remains thus to this day.

[quote]it's definitely not the most amazing city but it's 100x better than Stockton,

California has two major cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The 400 miles in between are a whole lotta dinky boring buttfuck bergs whose sole raison d'etre is to provide fuel and food for the mob wisely passing through to somewhere else.

The gay scene in San Jose is tragic, as are its participants. As we always said, they are too unattractive to make it up north in the big city.

Sausalito, BABY!

The comments on this thread remind me of when my partner, who grew up in San Jose back when it was trashier than it is now, had some co-worker who apparently said something rude about San Jose and all my partner could think of to say in return was, "At least it's not STOCKTON."

San Jose is the Tacoma of California.

Agriculture accounts for the OVERWHELMING majority of California's water use. California doesn't even need desalination, it just needs a cheap way to send fresh water to cities FIRST, then pump the filtered (and poop-enriched) sewage water back uphill to inland farmers for watering crops.

"Making deserts bloom" is great 1970s agitprop, but stupid as an economic policy.

Farming makes a few plantation-like farming conglomerates richer. Silicon Valley makes 10x as many people into billionaires, 100-1000x as many into millionaires, and a million times as many people middle-class or above (compared to farmworkers).

Silicon Valley has done nothing but widen the gap between the rich and the poor while threatening our constitutional rights.

And these techbro doucheholes voted for every rule and regulation that drove mediocre tract homes over the million dollar mark.

All those vegetable farms that employ migrant workers are the closest thing to slavery in the modern United States outside of prison labor. And think of how many animals are killed to grow heads of quick-wilting lettuce just so some thunder-thighed Karen can have a salad drenched with HFCS-laden dressing.

[quote]Farming makes a few plantation-like farming conglomerates richer.

Central Valley feeds this country.

[quote]Silicon Valley makes 10x as many people into billionaires, 100-1000x as many into millionaires, and a million times as many people middle-class or above (compared to farmworkers).

You can't eat billionaires.

[quote]All those vegetable farms that employ migrant workers are the closest thing to slavery in the modern United States outside of prison labor.

All made worse by last week's Supreme Court decision, 6 to 3, making it harder for union organizers to reach farm workers. Write your Senators and Representative now and demand a living wage for farm laborers.

Still amazing how most people don’t realize how much of their food is grown in California’s Central Valley.

California basically exists because of the bizarre accident of nature which provided the Central Valley with ideal growing conditions.

But not for long, because of global warming.

[quote] Why does San Jose seems less well known than other California cities

Because people don't know The Way To San Jose.

The surrounding suburbs in the hills are nice and more affluent. . San Jose is a concrete pit, not nice, horrible traffic. N Cal native here

I have a friend there. She's from NYC and has lived in the San Jose area for more than three decades. She loves it for the climate (no San Francisco fog and no east coast harsh winters) and for the great restaurants and diversity.

"You can't eat billionaires."

I suggest we try.

No body knows the way to San Jose

frankie doesn't

The Osmond brothers don't

Jim O' rourke got lost

Connie gave up too

and Jonathan is not even trying

Burt is still searching

Maybe Rita will be lucky ?

where the Avalanches have failed

Kiki Dee could tell you why OP

Because it's a mediocre city with no distinguishing features.

Because Michelle opted for Knot's landing instead

While Sandi and Sally will die trying

But if even Neil can't fing it...

Could Jimmy Dorsey ?

R55 Fucking NAILED it.

So over the, oh, parts of it are just charming, and...the kicker of LIES...: "what perfect weather!", the real estate poodles here are trying to sell.

It's a fucking hell hole. And not even in a fun Spinal Tap way.

In San Jose all seems to breathe freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils.

Sandi and Sally couldn't even take San Jose. They moved on.

[quote] I lived there in 1974--when I first got out of college and started my first job. Back then, you could buy a decent condo for only $30K

Amazing how much things change in 50 years.

I bet you could have bought large plots of land for $30K in 1924

Does San Jose have its own broadcast TV stations or do you just get say the NBC affiliate in San Francisco?

Can you pull in SF radio stations?

And do the San Francisco newspapers cover San Jose as part of their "metro" coverage?

r83 yes to all

Thanks R84! So, to clarify, it looks like San Jose and San Francisco share TV stations, e.g, the NBC affiliate is based in San Jose but called "NBC Bay Area"

I grew up there and thought it was dumb even as a kid. We would take the bus to SF in order to do something other than visit the Egyptian Museum or a strip mall. Everything already said here is accurate.

Now as a decrepit guy circling the drain I appreciate the unpretentious blandness and safety of the place. Plus there was a large hispanic culture. Spanish was taught in public schools. I loved that.

Good cheap Mexican food to be had all over San Jose.

WRONG r87 Once upon a time,perhaps, but San Jose can't even get Mexican food right these days. They can't get anything right and they don't even try.

Chains, chains and more chains. "Upscale" ones like that shitty quasi Italian dump Il Fornaio.

Gross.

I remember back in the 90s being impressed by their timed traffic lights that allowed cars to travel in a wave of traffic on local streets for several miles before hitting a red light. It was not something found elsewhere in Bay Area.

San Jose, keeping it classy...

r85 That only happened because the former NBC affiliate (KRON in San Francisco) balked at continuing its affiliation with the network, so NBC switched to KNTV in San Jose, which was a secondary ABC affiliate serving the south Bay and points south (like down to Monterey/Salinas.) Then NBC bought the station outright.

The San Jose die-hards are adorable, except for the adorable part.

Well, it is better than Stockton. Stockton used to be kind of an okay farm town, but now it's a hot dump with a lot of crime. San Jose is bland and sprawling, but the weather's decent and crime isn't a huge problem. It's just kind of bland. People don't go to San Jose to do things. They go to San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Napa, Berkeley, even Palo Alto which has a downtown about three streets wide. But San Jose? Nah.

So, nice enough to live there, but you wouldn't want to visit.

San Jose is a great place. All you mincing queens would die to live here if given a chance. It has great restaurants, great shopping malls, very little crime, close to some of the most scenic places in the world (Big Sur, Redwoods etc) , excellent climate, friendly and very liberal crowd. Probably the only city in the US where I can feel safe walking alone at 1 AM.

It has no culture, history, character ? Yeah, big deal. I'd rather have good food, good people around me, great weather, great places to hang out than some imaginary character that you stupid queens made up in your messed up head. Fuck off.

I like Stockton. That said, I get that it is... "Stockton". You know your city is shite when basically what you have to say about it is that it is "better than Stockton". I mean...where do you even go with that?

Modesto...It's better than Stockton.

Ew.

Irvine has charm? Lol.

It only did way back when Irvine was nothing more than a gas station, a store and a billion orange trees delineated by lines of massive eucalyptus trees, and the only thing happening was Rex Heflin taking pictures of UFOs, people driving through Lion Country Safari and kids scaring each other with tales of "Old Lady Irvine."

Now, it's just another corporate-suburban San Jose. The headquarters of Taco Bell...

Nobody knows the way to San Jose, Dionne, because nobody has a reason to go there.

~12 years ago, I had a fantastic Friday night at a bar in San Jose learning how Intel bootstrap mode (where the CPU uses its cache as RAM) works, before going home with the guy & his husband and taking turns with him fucking his husband's brains out.

The next night in San Francisco, I spent 3 hours pretending to give a shit about some celebrity so I could fuck some leather guy with purses falling from his mouth every time he opened it.

San Jose was a lot more fun & intellectually stimulating.

And physically stimulating too, by the sounds of it!

R88 you don't know what you're talking about, there's plenty of good Mexican food in San Jose... that being said it's probably not any better than SF or Oakland and not as good as SoCal

[quote] Because Michelle opted for Knot's landing instead

She made the right choice.

R94 "great shopping malls" ????????? That tells us all why we NEVER need to go to San Jose.

r102 Bitch, this place is too good for you. You aren't needed here.

How do Fresno and Bakersfield compare with Stockton, Modesto and SJ?

r104 One of those is not like the others. San Jose is not in the Central Valley and is nothing like the other four.

ok r105. That should say "How do Fresno and Bakersfield compare and contrast with Stockton, Modesto and SJ?". Happy now?

Yeah it sucks

I don't want high density living where I live. Why would I want that? To get more fucking people around me? To see my quality of life go down because I have no backyard and many neighbors? No thank you.

I have an idea. Take one of your desired high rises, and shove it up your butt.

'Cause it's fucking impossible to find or to convince complete strangers to stop and give you directions to it, bitch!!!"

Modesto has and edge over Stockton because of its association with the wine industry. Ernest & Julio Gallo’s winery is located there. I’ve never heard of a Stockton wine.

There's a wine industry in Lodi, just north of Stockton.

Yes put more people in Stockton or Modesto. Leave San Jose alone.

[quote]it is one of the wealthiest major cities in the world. It has the highest percentage of million-dollar (or more) homes in the US. The metropolitan area has the most millionaires and the most billionaires in the US per capita. Households in the city limits have the highest disposable income of any city in the US.

And?

Yes, of course r111, but it says Lodi on the bottles not Stockton. Stockton wine I’d imagine being something like Night Train or Thunderbird.

Lol@114

The only reason to go to San Jose - the Water Garden bathhouse - is gone now. Alas.

[quote] There's a wine industry in Lodi, just north of Stockton.

Please. Why not just drink grape cola out of a can?