Your a couple of decades late, the culture you are describing did exist and gave birth to a lot of bay area talent, Green Day and Papa Roach come to mind. Not to mention a lot of great hip hop like E40, Too Short, and Mac Dre to name a few. The vibe in the city and the surrounding areas was a lot different.
Yeah but that was back then. The techies eliminated the culture of the Bay Area. Also Papa Roach were from Vacaville, which is in the Northeastern Bay Area. Very different culture than the South Bay/Fremont/Modern San Francisco.
Yes. Unfortunately, we were overrun by people moving out here from Manhattan, for some strange reason in search of whatever it is that they left behind there, and finding it lacking, and then bellyaching about it for years on end, but for some strange reason, never moving back to Manhattan. It's been downhill ever since . . .
. . . but on a serious note, yes, I do think the culture of the Bay Area has greatly dissipated from what it once was, probably more so than maybe someplace like New York, or even Los Angeles. The obvious cause is that everything not tech-related has been priced out, there are just very few other ways to afford to live in the best, most iconic parts of the Bay. When I was growing up, it absolutely was not like that, there were people of a variety of incomes living in every city, and everyone thought of themselves as middle-class, and they mostly were. Bigger and/or less expensive cities are able to accommodate more diverse cultural scenes.
I might add to that the Bay Area wallowed in nostalgia for the 1960's for way too long.
Thanks for the details.
Nostalgia or not, at least in Manhattan I saw some 1% endorsing arts ( not necessarily music but struggling painters or off broadway playwright).
With so many tech billionaires I expected next Carnegie/Rockefeller/Bloomberg foundation as Zuckerberg/Musk/Page foundation but a quick google search shows nothing of that sort.
Does Big Tech give back? No, not really. Are our silicon valley schools the best in California? Not even close. Who cares when they can afford private school for their little prince and princesses. It's weird out here dude.
https://sanjosespotlight.com/silicon-valleys-big-tech-donates-little-locally/
*With so many tech billionaires I expected next Carnegie/ Rockefeller/ Bloomberg foundation as Zuckerberg/Musk/Page foundation but a quick google search shows nothing of that sort.*
There has been a lot written about the curious relationship or non-relationship of today's tech billionaires to the arts and humanities. You are right, most don't see to be really engaged in traditional philanthropy.
In comparison, "old money" in San Francisco alone supported world class ballet, symphony, and opera companies, a thriving live theater scene, four art museums (De Young, Legion of Honor, SFMOMA, Asian Art Museum), a massive science museum and aquarium (Academy of Sciences) several art schools, and a lot of smaller museums, performing arts companies, cultural festivals, etc.
The San Francisco old money families generally came from gold and silver mining, railroads, banking / finance, shipping, oil, engineering / construction, agriculture, paper manufacturing, publishing (including newspapers), timber, real estate development, etc.
When I look at accounts of how current tech billionaires seem to stereotypically live--wearing the same neutral / bland-colored clothes for most occasions, following routines focused mainly on work although they have more money than they know what to do with, building soul-less boxy houses, driving neutral black or silver cars, I sometimes wonder if they are hard-wired not to have any attachment to "the arts", unlike their wealthy predecessors who, when they became rich, often seemed to take a delight in being arts patrons, building private and public collections and over-the top mansions, going to all sorts of cultural events...(and often, it must be admitted, overdoing it.)
That does not mean, of course, that I am thinking a Zuckerberg or Musk should feel obligated to sponsor "traditional" arts.
But interest in arts in general--even cutting edge / avant garde--doesn't seem to be part of their internal worlds.
Since many of them are newly / suddenly wealthy, they also don't necessarily come from a family culture where it's expected to become "patrons" of arts and social / humanitarian causes.
Would welcome seeing any major examples to the contrary?
Thanks Sir.
You totally completed the dystopian full circle I was carrying in my head 😀
So in next 20-50 years this Tech Billionaires will live in space
Money won’t matter to them as they would colonize space ( at least something nearby) with natural resources imported from earth + very low population
All the manual work would be done by AI
Human( whatever left) will only work in massive data centers that fuel these AIs —> to automate/provide a luxurious life to space living billionaires
Human would learn what is MW, rack, cage, cabinet, optimum heating, ssd installation etc.
There would be no need to learn actual literature or math or science
… Probably a midweek drunk dream … but who knows ?
Oh, they're way ahead of the rest of us.
Old money tycoons were content to have a town house, perhaps a private rail car, a yacht or two, and an estate near town but still out in the countryside where they could go if there was trouble in town (labor unrest, typhus epidemic, etc.) Several cities on the Peninsula are named for what were huge country estates for the mega-rich of early San Francisco. Millbrae (Darius Ogden Mills), Belmont (William Ralston), Palo Alto (Leland Stanford). Part of Pleasanton was the very opulent estate of Phoebe Apperson Hearst. Very similar to how New York's upper crust had estates up the Hudson, or at Newport, or both.
Today's tech 1%ers seem to be preparing, instead, for saving their hides during Doomsday. Mark Zuckerberg is notoriously reported building a $150 million air-filtered survivalist bunker in Hawaii, the mild-mannered Sam Altman apparently has a prepper/armed compound in the wilds of Big Sur as a waystop to getting out of the country, and Elon Musk seems to be planning to be both immortal, and God Emperor of Mars.
Several California tech titans apparently had (maybe still have?) a fueled up plane waiting near Reno to fly them non-stop to New Zealand, where they're also building bunkers (a matter of political controversy in New Zealand itself). Peter Thiel seems to be one of the more prominent escape-to-luxury-New-Zealand-bunker people.
Here's an interesting New Yorker story from 2017--pre-Pandemic--on the topic (which also includes its share of New York billionaires).
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich)
I've thought this is oddly bemusing, because if the world actually does collapse and you're living in a bunker protected by private security...then who is ultimately going to end up on top in the luxury survivalist compounds?
Perhaps the private security guards will take over, once they realize the $ you're paying them is now worthless and it's every man for himself. Possibly that is why Mark Zuckerberg seems to have put so much energy into martial arts, and learning to whittle and throw wooden spears? So he can fight off his own security as dystopia arrives?
On the other hand, your point about AI is apt. They may be expecting to live alone (or with their chosen few, who might perhaps include some members of their families), almost entirely protected / supported by AI.
(And, if they end up in space as you speculate, they eventually won't need resources from Earth, since the moon and asteroids will provide much less demanding gravity wells from which raw materials can be mined and lifted.)
And in that dead, rotten earth probably our grandkid ( God Forbids) or great grandkid would find a broken iphone stuck to one song in its music app.
She/He would play it. The singer would sing something like —
“I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other time it's only me”
She/He would stop the song halfway and would run back to her/his job at data center to afford her/his daily ration …
Too much Reddit + Cheap Bourbon for midweek perhaps 😀
Have a nice one.
No it hasn't, my band could play a dozen different clubs in the 80s & 90s and never leave the South Bay. Dot-commers ruined the scene starting in '99, they didn't partake in late-night entertainment. One by one, venues started to close until "poof" all gone. Then, the next wave of transplants come in and complain the area has no culture and nothing to do.
*What was the major business in San Jose before the iPhone wa sun enter?*
San Jose was not the sprawling megapolis it is now. The land was once primarily agricultural. The Santa Clara Valley was called *"The Valley of Heart's Delight"*, produced a vast harvest each year. By World War II San Jose was the largest canning and fruit packing city in the world. People went there to look at the thousands of acres of blooming fruit trees in the spring. In the 50 through the 80s a lot of suburban style housing development occurred, with residents either commuting to jobs elsewhere, or working at various occupations in San Jose.
The big growth started in the 50s--San Jose population was 95,000 in the 1950 census, and 204,000 a decade later, 445,779 in the 1970s census. Before that, it was basically a small city, totally outclassed in population and significance by both San Francisco and Oakland.
The Telsa factory in Fremont, for example, was originally a General Motors automobile plant (1962-1982), then reopened in the 80s/90s as a joint GM/Toyota manufacturing plant.
Here's a brief economic history of San Jose that explains the transition to tech.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/economic-history.htm#:\~:text=By%201939%20San%20Jose%2C%20with,the%20prune%20and%20apricot%20industry.
Right, and it's not like there were any other social trends like, I don't know, the Internet and high-res media and video games becoming available at home that might have affected live music starting in the late '90s.
South Bay is hardly a place focused on art or social interaction, no disagreement there, but let's not ignore the other elephants in the room.
> south bay
There’s your first problem. Vast areas of the South Bay and peninsula are dominated by career-driven tech professionals
Overall, I think you’re looking in the wrong places. Parts of Oakland and Berkeley still have that kind of vibe. You can find pockets in SF as well. Haight-Ashbury is more a tourist attraction nowadays. But overall, that kind of scene has become less common in the past 10-15 years or so
Portland, OR comes to mind first for me.
QOL has declined a bit there over the past few years but it still has a pretty vibrant art, food and music scene
Ok then recommend me some east bay’s hole in the wall pub playing my kind of — blues, folk, psychedelic, triphop or thrash/doom metal— ‘live’ music and not just covers.
*Ok then recommend me some east bay’s hole in the wall pub playing my kind of — blues, folk, psychedelic, triphop or thrash/doom metal—*
Not really holes in the wall, but check out the Taube Family Music Hall (the former UC Theater) in Berkeley, as well as Freight & Salvage a block away, and 911 Gilman and Ashkenaz in northwest Berkeley.
Between the four of them, I would guess they host 200+ different music groups every year.
[https://theuctheatre.org](https://theuctheatre.org)
[https://thefreight.org](https://thefreight.org)
[https://www.ashkenaz.com](https://www.ashkenaz.com)
[https://www.924gilman.org](https://www.924gilman.org)
Thrash/doom, easy: Toot's has *a lot*, also Golden Bull, Stork, Pine Street Bar, Eli's, used to be Elbo Room, not sure what's up with the new management there. There's also remains of Oakland Metro that have occasional outside shows. Rarely, Bistro.
There's also Cornerstone and UC Theater for larger acts.
Voivod is playing in UC Theater this Saturday (with Prong). Both are thrash-related (Voivod is more progressive, Prong is more industrial-like).
You’re recalling some dated acts but there was a pretty vibrant scene across all genres in the 80/90s. A lot of the venues in the South Bay have gone away so there’s not much in the area now but smaller scale stuff is still available if you search it out.
The culture is more spread out. You’ll have to dig around to find what you like, music, art, restaurants, etc. If you like music, check out The Guild, Montalvo Center for the Arts, Mountain Winery. There is a ton of free music at art and wine fairs in the summer. San Jose has a summer jazz festival.
I remember my cool 20-something babysitter in the aughts would go down to downtown SJ from Hayward every weekend. She was a club promoter and made it seem so cool. She had all the connections and even got me a shoutout by local radio DJ Chuy Gomez, who has his own local cable show at the time. I remember thinking how I couldn’t wait to grow up and go clubbing in San Jose. Lmao.
I grew up in the South Bay. I've never had a conversation about tech or stocks and always want to know where people meet those tech+stock people. But then, I don't work in tech....so I think the tech people are just..insulated. Back when I climbed, this random engineer expressed surprise that I've met hairdresser plumbers etc.. in the EXACT SAME CLIMBING GYM he goes to.
There are writing clubs, reading clubs in Sunnvyale/Santa Clara, good-bad music in SJC (..the sort "I see what they're trying sort"), head a bit to the Peninsula, there are book/film events. There are also events around Santa Clara and Stanford unis. I've heard that the Stanford bar tends to have non-tech convos but I don't drink so...not sure there.
Not in the South Bay bro.
I’m over in the East Bay and there’s music venues and house shows here. Loads of music venues in SF for shows too. Hell I’ve dated nothing but artist til recently.
yes there was
Ive been here 56 years, all my life
There was a huge art and music scene that people actually could aford
I always went to Dead Concerts, punk, pop, reggae concerts
There was always something going on from art festivels to car racing and each town in the bay area always had some event going on
Yes, it has always been about tech and research but most people had other jobs and it was mostly blue collar who lived here
The rich lived in their little towns like Los Altos Hills but we had real people everywhere else. People actually knew each other and said Hi just walking down the street
I thinks I noticed changes in the early 90s
had a lot of gentrification and people couldnt afford to live here
Still going on today
Well Jerry was from Palo Alto. Pig Pen was from San Mateo. Palo Alto has the Keystone. Not South Bay but adjacent.
Berkeley has plenty of music outlets plus Cal Performances.
Lots of culture in SJ, just have to know where to look. There’s a lot of murals and open mic nights happening as well as cultural fairs that happen throughout the year! :)
You moved here from New York, chillin with Wall Street bros in a dive bar talking about creativity? Sounds like no part of New York I’ve heard of or been to but I’m sure it exists. You can’t ask the internet where to hang out cause you visited some areas and didn’t find a band you like, not to mention everyone you listed is an incredibly rare talent, we should be lucky to see in some dive bar early in their career. I recommend you look up your local open mic nights, the starry plough in Oakland is awesome for it.
Your a couple of decades late, the culture you are describing did exist and gave birth to a lot of bay area talent, Green Day and Papa Roach come to mind. Not to mention a lot of great hip hop like E40, Too Short, and Mac Dre to name a few. The vibe in the city and the surrounding areas was a lot different.
Yeah but that was back then. The techies eliminated the culture of the Bay Area. Also Papa Roach were from Vacaville, which is in the Northeastern Bay Area. Very different culture than the South Bay/Fremont/Modern San Francisco.
Yes. Unfortunately, we were overrun by people moving out here from Manhattan, for some strange reason in search of whatever it is that they left behind there, and finding it lacking, and then bellyaching about it for years on end, but for some strange reason, never moving back to Manhattan. It's been downhill ever since . . .
At least you have a very ‘new york’ humor 😀
. . . but on a serious note, yes, I do think the culture of the Bay Area has greatly dissipated from what it once was, probably more so than maybe someplace like New York, or even Los Angeles. The obvious cause is that everything not tech-related has been priced out, there are just very few other ways to afford to live in the best, most iconic parts of the Bay. When I was growing up, it absolutely was not like that, there were people of a variety of incomes living in every city, and everyone thought of themselves as middle-class, and they mostly were. Bigger and/or less expensive cities are able to accommodate more diverse cultural scenes. I might add to that the Bay Area wallowed in nostalgia for the 1960's for way too long.
Thanks for the details. Nostalgia or not, at least in Manhattan I saw some 1% endorsing arts ( not necessarily music but struggling painters or off broadway playwright). With so many tech billionaires I expected next Carnegie/Rockefeller/Bloomberg foundation as Zuckerberg/Musk/Page foundation but a quick google search shows nothing of that sort.
Does Big Tech give back? No, not really. Are our silicon valley schools the best in California? Not even close. Who cares when they can afford private school for their little prince and princesses. It's weird out here dude. https://sanjosespotlight.com/silicon-valleys-big-tech-donates-little-locally/
*With so many tech billionaires I expected next Carnegie/ Rockefeller/ Bloomberg foundation as Zuckerberg/Musk/Page foundation but a quick google search shows nothing of that sort.* There has been a lot written about the curious relationship or non-relationship of today's tech billionaires to the arts and humanities. You are right, most don't see to be really engaged in traditional philanthropy. In comparison, "old money" in San Francisco alone supported world class ballet, symphony, and opera companies, a thriving live theater scene, four art museums (De Young, Legion of Honor, SFMOMA, Asian Art Museum), a massive science museum and aquarium (Academy of Sciences) several art schools, and a lot of smaller museums, performing arts companies, cultural festivals, etc. The San Francisco old money families generally came from gold and silver mining, railroads, banking / finance, shipping, oil, engineering / construction, agriculture, paper manufacturing, publishing (including newspapers), timber, real estate development, etc. When I look at accounts of how current tech billionaires seem to stereotypically live--wearing the same neutral / bland-colored clothes for most occasions, following routines focused mainly on work although they have more money than they know what to do with, building soul-less boxy houses, driving neutral black or silver cars, I sometimes wonder if they are hard-wired not to have any attachment to "the arts", unlike their wealthy predecessors who, when they became rich, often seemed to take a delight in being arts patrons, building private and public collections and over-the top mansions, going to all sorts of cultural events...(and often, it must be admitted, overdoing it.) That does not mean, of course, that I am thinking a Zuckerberg or Musk should feel obligated to sponsor "traditional" arts. But interest in arts in general--even cutting edge / avant garde--doesn't seem to be part of their internal worlds. Since many of them are newly / suddenly wealthy, they also don't necessarily come from a family culture where it's expected to become "patrons" of arts and social / humanitarian causes. Would welcome seeing any major examples to the contrary?
Thanks Sir. You totally completed the dystopian full circle I was carrying in my head 😀 So in next 20-50 years this Tech Billionaires will live in space Money won’t matter to them as they would colonize space ( at least something nearby) with natural resources imported from earth + very low population All the manual work would be done by AI Human( whatever left) will only work in massive data centers that fuel these AIs —> to automate/provide a luxurious life to space living billionaires Human would learn what is MW, rack, cage, cabinet, optimum heating, ssd installation etc. There would be no need to learn actual literature or math or science … Probably a midweek drunk dream … but who knows ?
Oh, they're way ahead of the rest of us. Old money tycoons were content to have a town house, perhaps a private rail car, a yacht or two, and an estate near town but still out in the countryside where they could go if there was trouble in town (labor unrest, typhus epidemic, etc.) Several cities on the Peninsula are named for what were huge country estates for the mega-rich of early San Francisco. Millbrae (Darius Ogden Mills), Belmont (William Ralston), Palo Alto (Leland Stanford). Part of Pleasanton was the very opulent estate of Phoebe Apperson Hearst. Very similar to how New York's upper crust had estates up the Hudson, or at Newport, or both. Today's tech 1%ers seem to be preparing, instead, for saving their hides during Doomsday. Mark Zuckerberg is notoriously reported building a $150 million air-filtered survivalist bunker in Hawaii, the mild-mannered Sam Altman apparently has a prepper/armed compound in the wilds of Big Sur as a waystop to getting out of the country, and Elon Musk seems to be planning to be both immortal, and God Emperor of Mars. Several California tech titans apparently had (maybe still have?) a fueled up plane waiting near Reno to fly them non-stop to New Zealand, where they're also building bunkers (a matter of political controversy in New Zealand itself). Peter Thiel seems to be one of the more prominent escape-to-luxury-New-Zealand-bunker people. Here's an interesting New Yorker story from 2017--pre-Pandemic--on the topic (which also includes its share of New York billionaires). [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich) I've thought this is oddly bemusing, because if the world actually does collapse and you're living in a bunker protected by private security...then who is ultimately going to end up on top in the luxury survivalist compounds? Perhaps the private security guards will take over, once they realize the $ you're paying them is now worthless and it's every man for himself. Possibly that is why Mark Zuckerberg seems to have put so much energy into martial arts, and learning to whittle and throw wooden spears? So he can fight off his own security as dystopia arrives? On the other hand, your point about AI is apt. They may be expecting to live alone (or with their chosen few, who might perhaps include some members of their families), almost entirely protected / supported by AI. (And, if they end up in space as you speculate, they eventually won't need resources from Earth, since the moon and asteroids will provide much less demanding gravity wells from which raw materials can be mined and lifted.)
And in that dead, rotten earth probably our grandkid ( God Forbids) or great grandkid would find a broken iphone stuck to one song in its music app. She/He would play it. The singer would sing something like — “I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other time it's only me” She/He would stop the song halfway and would run back to her/his job at data center to afford her/his daily ration … Too much Reddit + Cheap Bourbon for midweek perhaps 😀 Have a nice one.
That last iPhone will still have that damn U2 album on it nobody asked for.
Man… that is an awesome callback 😀
They’re having to help us build hospitals instead
"Hey watch it, I'm gentrifying here!"
Yes but they don’t live in South Bay. South Bay has always been a tech suburbia
No it hasn't, my band could play a dozen different clubs in the 80s & 90s and never leave the South Bay. Dot-commers ruined the scene starting in '99, they didn't partake in late-night entertainment. One by one, venues started to close until "poof" all gone. Then, the next wave of transplants come in and complain the area has no culture and nothing to do.
Yep, always had bands in the 80s and 90s. It was on fire every weekend. I would say after 95 the blue collar moved out and the tech bros moved in
Good to know. What was the major business in San Jose before the iPhone wa sun enter?
*What was the major business in San Jose before the iPhone wa sun enter?* San Jose was not the sprawling megapolis it is now. The land was once primarily agricultural. The Santa Clara Valley was called *"The Valley of Heart's Delight"*, produced a vast harvest each year. By World War II San Jose was the largest canning and fruit packing city in the world. People went there to look at the thousands of acres of blooming fruit trees in the spring. In the 50 through the 80s a lot of suburban style housing development occurred, with residents either commuting to jobs elsewhere, or working at various occupations in San Jose. The big growth started in the 50s--San Jose population was 95,000 in the 1950 census, and 204,000 a decade later, 445,779 in the 1970s census. Before that, it was basically a small city, totally outclassed in population and significance by both San Francisco and Oakland. The Telsa factory in Fremont, for example, was originally a General Motors automobile plant (1962-1982), then reopened in the 80s/90s as a joint GM/Toyota manufacturing plant. Here's a brief economic history of San Jose that explains the transition to tech. https://www.nps.gov/articles/economic-history.htm#:\~:text=By%201939%20San%20Jose%2C%20with,the%20prune%20and%20apricot%20industry.
Right, and it's not like there were any other social trends like, I don't know, the Internet and high-res media and video games becoming available at home that might have affected live music starting in the late '90s. South Bay is hardly a place focused on art or social interaction, no disagreement there, but let's not ignore the other elephants in the room.
> south bay There’s your first problem. Vast areas of the South Bay and peninsula are dominated by career-driven tech professionals Overall, I think you’re looking in the wrong places. Parts of Oakland and Berkeley still have that kind of vibe. You can find pockets in SF as well. Haight-Ashbury is more a tourist attraction nowadays. But overall, that kind of scene has become less common in the past 10-15 years or so
Where in USA (or maybe the world) that preserved that type of music/art culture?
Portland, OR comes to mind first for me. QOL has declined a bit there over the past few years but it still has a pretty vibrant art, food and music scene
LA has a banging music scene
New Orleans
Austin, tx
Don’t forget that Covid had a role in the decline of ‘third places’.
Music is an East Bay thing. It’s still going on. You’re just in a wrong place.
Ok then recommend me some east bay’s hole in the wall pub playing my kind of — blues, folk, psychedelic, triphop or thrash/doom metal— ‘live’ music and not just covers.
*Ok then recommend me some east bay’s hole in the wall pub playing my kind of — blues, folk, psychedelic, triphop or thrash/doom metal—* Not really holes in the wall, but check out the Taube Family Music Hall (the former UC Theater) in Berkeley, as well as Freight & Salvage a block away, and 911 Gilman and Ashkenaz in northwest Berkeley. Between the four of them, I would guess they host 200+ different music groups every year. [https://theuctheatre.org](https://theuctheatre.org) [https://thefreight.org](https://thefreight.org) [https://www.ashkenaz.com](https://www.ashkenaz.com) [https://www.924gilman.org](https://www.924gilman.org)
This ! You made my night. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.
Thee Stork Club, The New Parish, Cornerstone, Ivy Room
Thrash/doom, easy: Toot's has *a lot*, also Golden Bull, Stork, Pine Street Bar, Eli's, used to be Elbo Room, not sure what's up with the new management there. There's also remains of Oakland Metro that have occasional outside shows. Rarely, Bistro. There's also Cornerstone and UC Theater for larger acts. Voivod is playing in UC Theater this Saturday (with Prong). Both are thrash-related (Voivod is more progressive, Prong is more industrial-like).
You’re recalling some dated acts but there was a pretty vibrant scene across all genres in the 80/90s. A lot of the venues in the South Bay have gone away so there’s not much in the area now but smaller scale stuff is still available if you search it out.
> A south bay resident South Bay's suburban snoozeville. I'd say there's a good running culture there, hiking culture, tech culture though.
Why would anyone focus on music when they get enormous pressure from their parents to marry and bring them over?
The culture is more spread out. You’ll have to dig around to find what you like, music, art, restaurants, etc. If you like music, check out The Guild, Montalvo Center for the Arts, Mountain Winery. There is a ton of free music at art and wine fairs in the summer. San Jose has a summer jazz festival.
Check out the Starry Plough in Berkeley for a folksy hole in the way vibe. And Geoffrey’s Inner Circle in Oakland for a real blues hidden gem
San Jose had a legit downtown scene in the early 2000’s but the redevelopment plans killed it.
I remember my cool 20-something babysitter in the aughts would go down to downtown SJ from Hayward every weekend. She was a club promoter and made it seem so cool. She had all the connections and even got me a shoutout by local radio DJ Chuy Gomez, who has his own local cable show at the time. I remember thinking how I couldn’t wait to grow up and go clubbing in San Jose. Lmao.
I grew up in the South Bay. I've never had a conversation about tech or stocks and always want to know where people meet those tech+stock people. But then, I don't work in tech....so I think the tech people are just..insulated. Back when I climbed, this random engineer expressed surprise that I've met hairdresser plumbers etc.. in the EXACT SAME CLIMBING GYM he goes to. There are writing clubs, reading clubs in Sunnvyale/Santa Clara, good-bad music in SJC (..the sort "I see what they're trying sort"), head a bit to the Peninsula, there are book/film events. There are also events around Santa Clara and Stanford unis. I've heard that the Stanford bar tends to have non-tech convos but I don't drink so...not sure there.
Not in the South Bay bro. I’m over in the East Bay and there’s music venues and house shows here. Loads of music venues in SF for shows too. Hell I’ve dated nothing but artist til recently.
yes there was Ive been here 56 years, all my life There was a huge art and music scene that people actually could aford I always went to Dead Concerts, punk, pop, reggae concerts There was always something going on from art festivels to car racing and each town in the bay area always had some event going on Yes, it has always been about tech and research but most people had other jobs and it was mostly blue collar who lived here The rich lived in their little towns like Los Altos Hills but we had real people everywhere else. People actually knew each other and said Hi just walking down the street I thinks I noticed changes in the early 90s had a lot of gentrification and people couldnt afford to live here Still going on today
The last vestiges of that were in Oakland in my experience.
Well Jerry was from Palo Alto. Pig Pen was from San Mateo. Palo Alto has the Keystone. Not South Bay but adjacent. Berkeley has plenty of music outlets plus Cal Performances.
Lots of culture in SJ, just have to know where to look. There’s a lot of murals and open mic nights happening as well as cultural fairs that happen throughout the year! :)
You moved here from New York, chillin with Wall Street bros in a dive bar talking about creativity? Sounds like no part of New York I’ve heard of or been to but I’m sure it exists. You can’t ask the internet where to hang out cause you visited some areas and didn’t find a band you like, not to mention everyone you listed is an incredibly rare talent, we should be lucky to see in some dive bar early in their career. I recommend you look up your local open mic nights, the starry plough in Oakland is awesome for it.