(Article changed on May 1, 2013 at 12:22)
As every story is a meandering
road, each road is also a story, or, more accurately, an infinity of stories.
An abandoned trail that leads from nowhere to nowhere, with no wayfarers, only
a rare roadrunner, snake or javelina, would still be an endless source of
human-interest tales, or, more likely, tails. Haven't you heard of the ancient
saying, "Even the fool is wise after the Interstate," especially if he drives
off its exits often? Though a stuttering man of few sentences, terrible
eyesight and beer fizzled memory, I have managed to drag back a sackful of
observations from my snooping around San Jose's Story Road.
Each of my visit to San Jose
is a kind of homecoming, for my father, brother and, uh, absolutely composed,
considerate and non-screaming stepmother are still here, and have lived here
for decades. Though I have no sentimental attachment to this place, I also
don't hate it. Personal crap can be tedious, and I'm not trying to bore you,
only clarifying that I have my own rather lengthy Story Road in San Jose.
When I arrived in San Jose in 1978, it wasn't yet the much-lauded Silicon
Valley, but simply a dozing, loudly snoring place, with orange groves even, a
kind of Gilroy but with the ten-story Hotel De Anza. I watched minor league
baseball, inspected faux Egyptian artifacts. There were even less art and
culture in San Jose back then, as if that's possible. On television, a somber
message, "The San Jose Art Museum. Ignore it and it will go away." Down in
Monterey, they claim John Steinbeck, and up in Oakland,
there's a huge upscale-dining complex named after Jack London, but San Jose has
no native writers to mummify, trot out or turn into a pinata for tourists to
whack at. That's because no writer has ever lived in San Jose, and no notable
artist either. (Yes, Mark Tansey spent some time here, but that's about it, and
that's super lame for a major American city.) Now, I'm not saying that as soon
as a bona fide wordsmith steps foot in San Jose, all the air will rush from his
body, and all the blood too, but the Bay's crotch has been creatively impotent.
By 2007, the computer industry has transformed San Jose into the wealthiest
metropolis in the entire country, and with all this cash came a sheen of
sophistication. Not only didn't the San Jose Art Museum slink away, it now
regularly features pretty hip shows, as with its current exhibits of Eric Fishl
and contemporary Chinese photography. Downtown, the charmingly seedy dives have
been replaced by bistros, gastro pubs and martini lounges, and in the
beautifully designed and manicured Santana
Row,
sexy people come out to browse Guccis, Ferragamos and Teslas. Cushioned
armchairs and couches are placed outside, under shady trees. Roses, tulips and
daisies bloom. Here, even a toilet scrubber is decently attired, though there's
nothing you can do about the lowlife tourists who infiltrate to ogle and buy
nothing, save perhaps a cup of joe from Peet's. Draped in markdown merchandises
from Ross, the "Dress for Less" store, they annoyingly blight this gorgeous
tableaux. There ought to be a law, people, a dress code to shoo away these
corny riffraff, though the snapshots they post on Flickr do provide free
advertising. It's not worth it.
Suddenly I remember that I was supposed to give you a quickie tour of Story
Road, so let's go there, right now, and begin with the charmingly named Chot
Nho Cafe, which in Vietnamese means the "Suddenly Remember Cafe." No city
outside Vietnam has as many Vietnamese as San Jose, where they make up 10.4% of
the population. Like the Indian-run convenience store, Vietnamese nail salons
have become a national institution, familiar to Americans from Anchorage to Key
West, but the Vietnamese nudie coffee houses are, so far, limited to
California. A what coffee house? Well, let's go in and find out.
It is just before noon, and the place is packed. Five nearly naked women, four
Vietnamese and one white, are walking around serving hot and iced coffees, at
$5 a glass, and free hot and iced tea, frequently refilled. Eighty five percent
of the clientele are Vietnamese men, with most over 40-years-old, including a
handful of white haired elders. At a central table, a Hispanic and a black guy
are playing cards, and along one wall, there is a dozen video poker machines.
What really overwhelm the senses are the loud hip hop and the 20 TV screens
around the walls, showing sports nonstop, with one reserved for CNN. As if this
isn't enough, you can also order a plate of rice or noodles. So sit back and
enjoy Premiere League and Seria A soccer, endless ESPN analysis of anything
that was tossed, thrown or bounced last night, Anderson Cooper looking so
earnest, Lil' Wayne hollering, "I don't use rubbers, and I don't plan no kids,
girl," an iced coffee with way too much ice, and shadowy flesh fluttering by.
Don't stare too hard, now. Presently, one of the women is dancing on the
brightly lit counter and flashing her touching assets. In the Silicon Valley,
she's showing off her silicone peaks.
With its emphasis on staring, and not touching, talking or any other kind of
interaction, not even eye contact, and with its insane bombardment of the
senses, what's happening in this cafà © is essentially an American phenomenon, in
spite of its Vietnamese cosmetic touches. In a Saigon sex cafe or karaoke bar,
a male client would talk, grope and sing along with his hostess, they would
have to deal with each other as individuals, no matter how phony or bizarre
their interactions, but here, this physical and psychic intercourse is relieved
from both partners. Here, we dread the face to face contact, for the face, any
face, is too intense for us. We flee each other's faces by hiding our faces in
FaceBook. Oh please, don't make me look at your face again, for it is simply
too sexy, beautiful, sad and grotesque, and please, don't look at my eyes,
nose, mouth and forehead with your mercy or judgment. Look at my photos, and
I'll look at yours, OK?
Across the street from Chot Nho Cafe are two spiffy shopping centers, Grand
Century and Vietnam Town. They are owned by the same man, Tang Lap. Let's
quickly examine the ups and downs of this developer's resume, for they reflect
larger economic trends. Grand Century opened in 2001 and quickly became the
center of Vietnamese commercial and social life in San Jose. Pumped by its
success, Tang and other Vietnamese-American investors then bought a struggling
mall, Vallco Fashion Park, for $80 million in 2005. Vallco only had a 24%
occupancy rate, but Tang clearly thought he could revive it. He was wrong. The
economic crash that began in late 2007 only made matters much worse. Original
investors bailed out, others dove in, and by 2009, Tang and his crew were
desperately trying to dump their disaster on any sucker. With no fools nearby,
Tang was forced to cast his nest wide, and who did he snare but a food
processing magnate in distant Ho Chi Minh City, one Tram Be. Be paid Tang $64
million cash. His nose still bleeding, Be can now boast to his boozing buddies
that he owns an American shopping mall, one with Macy's, Sears, JCPenney, a
16-screen AMC theater and a "glow in the dark" bowling alley. His mall has the
"making of an international lifestyle center," he can slur, quoting his own
brochure, before he's cut off by a wiseass, "Hey, Be, on my recent trip to San
Jose, I stopped by your mall to admire it, but I saw almost no one in there. I
thought I had walked in on a bomb drill or something, for all I could see was a
few security guys. The food court was empty, the stores were empty, so what's
up with that, Be?"
Swallowing the recovery jive dished up daily by the US mainstream media, Be
probably still thinks he will get the last laugh, for when the US economy is
back on its feet again, his dismal mall will be filled with frolicking
consumers shoving and stepping on each other to buy anything and everything.
His merchants won't be months-late on their rents, and the food court will be
overflowing with jiggly folks washing down mounds of fried stuffs with rivers
of fizzy corn syrup.
Tang knows better. Though he was lucky to salvage a hubcap or two from his
Vallco wreck, he was still stuck with Vietnam Town, his most ambitious project
ever. This huge mall of 185 units was supposed to be finished in 2007, yet
stands mostly empty even now. The bank that funded it went bankrupt itself, and
the new bank that took over the debt started to foreclose on Tang, which forced
him to declare bankruptcy. Prospective merchants who had forked over huge
deposits couldn't cover their balances, for banks' lending standards had
stiffened, and housing prices had plummeted, making less available as
collaterals. What a mess is right, though driving by on Story Road, you might think
that's all is well, that here is a salient example of the Vietnamese-American
success story.
Vietnam Town is adjacent to Grand Century, so it was obviously conceived by
Tang to be an extension of his older mall, but why would you want to
concentrate so many Vietnamese businesses in one place? If you line up, say,
five pho joints in a row, the competition among them will drive prices down,
hurting their bottom lines, then knock out the weakest, but what's terrible for
business is often great for consumers. Cutthroat competition also forces
innovations, and since we're already in Vietnam Town, let's step inside Pho 90
Degree to sample some unusual dishes such as oxtail pho, pho with Kobe beef or
pho with smoked veal. Yum, yum, yum. I know that's a lot of food, but don't
worry, it's my treat.
On the back wall of Pho 90 Degree is a large mural
of Florence, with its unmistakable Brunelleschi dome and Palazzo Vecchio.
You might think that this is some leftover from a pizza joint, but no, it was
commissioned by the current Vietnamese owner. Though this is as ridiculous as
seeing a painted panorama of Hanoi in an Italian restaurant, none of the
Vietnamese diners find it odd. Vietnamese have a penchant and high tolerance
for the culturally incongruent. In most Vietnamese-American homes, you'll find
videos of a Vietnamese variety show called "Paris by Night," which is usually
filmed in Las Vegas. In a Hanoi home, I saw a large portrait of Napoleon on a
horse, though the owner, a well-known journalist and poet, no less, cared
nothing about the Corsican. Nguyen Huy Thiep has a fictional 19th century
Frenchman observe that Vietnam has been raped by Chinese civilization, but it's
also true that it has been raped by several other civilizations as well,
including French and American, and here I should clarify that one needs not
invade or occupy a country to rape or impose one's sweating and huffing heft on
it. Forced to repeatedly absolve the foreign on a massive scale, Vietnamese
have adapted by eagerly adopting the alien, if only very superficially. I mean,
most, if not all, of these diners don't know or care that this is Florence or
even anywhere in Italy, and on a Paris by Night video, you might find
Vietnamese dressed up as Mexicans and pretending to play mariachi.
Now we continue down Story Road, and it's odd to be walking, I agree, for no
one walks in San Jose except the homeless. We've seen a few homeless people already,
panhandling on median strips near Grand Century, but now we come upon tents
lurking in the woods around Coyote Creek. Driving by, you might fleetingly
glimpse a tent or two, but you must get out of your car and risk walking into
the bushes to realize how large this encampment is, how damning this evidence
of our economic, political and social collapse. Entire families live here, many
with children. Look at that crib
lying in the shade. Intending to stay a while, if not permanently, people have
erected barriers and fences for privacy and protect their few belongings. They
use ice chests to keep food cold, cook with propane stoves. Thanks to San
Jose's mild climate, no one risks freezing to death, but as in all tent cities,
of which there are now hundreds, if not thousands, across this great, indispensible
nation, sanitation is a huge problem. When not shooed away by a security guard,
some of these homeless bathe at the fire hydrant at Story and Roberts, and the
woods provide a breezy or sun-splashed bathroom. You can let everything hang
out as you bequeath to this earth a portion of yourself, a kind of down payment
towards death. If you decide not to go green, however, there are the nearby
shopping malls. Sometimes these homeless even stray into Chot Nho Cafà © to
survey, if only too briefly, even more atavistic baring and bearings, before
they're finally booted out.
San Jose is tolerating the Story Road tent city, for now, but in March, its
police tore down a more conspicuous encampment near the airport. It's all about
appearance, of course, for you can't have out-of-town visitors see destitution
or squalor as their first impression of San Jose. Before the last Super Bowl,
New Orleans also cleared out a large homeless community living by its train and
bus station. As a nation, we also have no plans to fix our economic problems,
only cosmetic touches to disguise them, such as the fixed unemployment and
inflation rates, and constant media assurance that the recovery is on course,
or even accelerating. Meanwhile, costly wars continue, as well as job outsourcing,
dressed up as "free trade" agreements.
Between the splendor of Santana Row and the wretchedness of these tent cities,
there is the ordinary San Jose of tacky strip malls and mostly pleasant looking
houses, and in these, life is still going on as usual, no? Look again. Take
Jay, who lives in this 400K house with his wife, Tracy. Born in 1970 in New
Hampshire, Jay earned an engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon, then served
nine years in the Navy, where he rose to become a commander of a nuclear
submarine, based in Philadelphia. Discharged, Jay moved to San Jose in 2002,
where he worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and,
finally, AQT, from 2007 until now. (For reasons that will be obvious, I've
disguised Jay's current employer.) Though a small company, AQT was raking in
the bucks, and up until four years ago, had 25 well-paid employees. Jay was
making $120,000 a year. With revenues down, the firing started, however, and
now AQT is reduced to five workers, with their salaries slashed. Jay is only
making $60,000 a year, not much in expensive San Jose, with its $4 gas and
sky-high real estate, yet his boss, whom Jay sneeringly calls Ho Chi Kevin,
sees this as a huge favor, for Jay's being paid for doing next to nothing.
(Neither man is Vietnamese, by the way, but balding white guys, just in case
you're wondering about the Ho reference.) To keep Jay occupied, Ho Chi Kevin
often sends him out on stupid errands, "The other day, he had me buy some
apples for him, but when I brought them back, he said they weren't the right
kind of apples!" Looked at me bug-eyed, Jay shook his head several times, "So I
said, "Well, what kind of fuckin' apples do you want?!' Actually, I didn't say
fuckin', I just said, "Well, what kind of apples do you want then?!" And guess
what, he couldn't even tell me! He just sent me out to get a different kind of
apples, and I had to try several times before I got it right. Did I get an
engineering degree for this? I used to run a nuclear submarine! Do you need an
engineering degree to buy freakin' apples?!"
To be misused or unused has become our common lot. In nearly every field,
corporate, military, civic, media, entertainment and academic, talent and
integrity are wasted, if not punished, as ruthless crooks, groveling connivers
and grinning morons rise to the top. Jay and I were sitting at an outdoors
table outside AQT. It was working hours, but Jay was clearly not missed, for
there was next to nothing for him to do inside. Hey, for 60 grand a year, most
people wouldn't mind running back and forth to the supermarket for Fuji,
Cortland, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Blue Crappy, Pacific
Rose, Gala, Ginger Rose, Monsanto Mutant or 666 Snake-Endorsed Special,
whatever, boss, I'll get it for you! The ax can slam on Jay's neck at any
moment, however, so he doesn't know if today will be his last at AQT. For four
years now, Jay's been frantically trying to find another job, entry level,
whatever, but nothing has come through. "So what's plan B?" I asked.
"I don't have a plan B, but plan C is to move to Taiwan to teach English."
Jay's wife was born in Taipei. "I really don't want to do that. I am an
American. I want to live in my own country."
Ho Chi Kevin is hanging onto his skeletal crew because he believes a recovery
is just around the corner. Be, too, is waiting for a recovery, as are his
tenants in their empty stores. In downtown's Cesar
Chavez Plaza, the homeless also wait, but for what, they're not quite sure.
Even as job applications are sent into the void, mortgage payments ignored,
bankruptcies filed and tents
spread
in shadow or sun, San Jose still gleams from afar, or as you speed by in your
car.
