San Hosed

West San Jose is hosed. What a crowded traffic jam of bad manners and crappy service.

Growing up there, it was a quiet place full of people who cared about the neighborhood and their neighbors. It wasn't an overcrowded pit of consumerism.

Since they loaded that square mile with 3 times as many stores as it used to have and a 14-screen theater, it's little more than a traffic jam with nearby shopping.

Cars shoe-horned into tiny spaces take up as much space as the stores and the design of the parking lot creates congestion at every turn. Clusterfrak.


I stopped into El Paseo to grab a cup of coffee at the usually reliable Peet's. The coffee was fine, but the service sucked ass.

Just as I was about to order my drip coffee, the punk at the register walked away. Then a nice, but clueless bird opened another register and started helping whoever was closest to her, disregarding the obvious line that was formed in front of the now-closed register.

What is so difficult about communicating to the customers that you need to leave your register and go flibbety flabble with something elsewhere?

And if you're the one opening up the other register, be aware of the line and respect the system you've set up. No one will be frustrated when they see the system working as it was designed.

There were a few high points of the afternoon... like seeing snow still on the hills. Hard to see in this pic, but if you look closely to the right of the power pole, that white spec on the green hill is snow.


And after struggling through traffic in West San Ho, we took a drive to Willow Glen trying to find a florist. We didn't find the florist, but I found another Meredith street sign:


That was my afternoon. Now I understand why a lot of kids I grew up with moved out of the area in search of a place more like what we knew as kids. I'm a fogey, eh?