I love this piece, although I reflect on my life now and I see myself far more fulfilled and happier than most traditional women I encounter. I guess with the past you can cherry pick and keep the good parts and ditch the bad parts. I had a great Thanksgiving Dinner but was extremely satisfied that I had never turned into someone who followed the rules and did things that women were supposed to do.
It’s only by observing the scores of unhappy women that came before you that you can stop and take control of your own life. I had a conversation with some people working in the sailing industry and we discussed how making lavendar cold weather gear might draw more women buyers into the industry. I pointed out that women who were compelled to buy only feminine products probably wouldn’t be achievement oriented or brave enough to do things as rough as sailing. It requires a lot of toleration of discomfort, a lot of character building, and a lot of strength of mind. Women who spend their lives shopping and need products in the color pink probably aren’t going to be the ones doing anything worth talking about many years from now, that’s just unfortunate, especially since pink is a swell color.
There are people who learn to get by on their looks their whole lives, and when those looks go, it’s a sad sight.
Still, there are many great things from the past. I love this passage by Wes Peyton about downtown San Jose.
Excerpt from San Jose: A Personal View by Wes Peyton
[Around 1989]
IN 1980, WHEN DOWNTOWN REDEVELOPMENT WAS A BITTER JOKE, I WROTE THAT THE ROMANTIC (OR OPTIMIST) IN ME RETAINED A CHILDLIKE FAITH THAT DOWNTOWN WOULD RISE AGAIN.
IF TALL BUILDINGS AND LUXURY HOTELS A DOWNTOWN MAKE (AND THEY DO TO A DEGREE) THEN THAT FAITH HAS BEEN REALIZED LESS THAN A DECADE LATER.
IN RETROSPECT, MUCH OF WHAT I MISSED OVER (AND PINED AFTER) HAS COME TO PASS, AND MORE APPEARS TO BE IN REASONABLE PROSPECT. BUT, TO LOOK BACK, HERE’S HOW THINGS LOOKED TO ME ON MARCH 12, 1980.
March 12, 1980
Before 1956 [San Jose] Downtown was the regional shopping center for the Santa Clara Valley: There were neighborhood centers, to be sure: Lincoln Avenue from Coe to Minnesota in Willow Glen, Santa Clara’s Franklin Street between the University of Santa Clara and the Carmelite Monastary, the Santa Clara Street between 20th and 24th street, and what Eastsiders used to call MayFair.
These had their unique character, but when Mama and the girls said they were going “downtown”, they meant downtown San Jose. (If for example they were headed for Lincoln Avenue they’d probaboy say they were going to “Willow Glen”)
Going downtown meant something substantially different in the 1940s and 1950s than going to Valley Fair or Eastridge means today. Now you go to buy a raincoat or a dinner, and then you go home again. When downtown was Downtown, you couldn’t separate your commercial from your social life that easily.
Frankly I miss that. It started to slip away in 1956, when the first major store in Valley Fair, San Jose’s first regional shopping center, opened for business.
Pre 1956 downtown had a lot going for it. Geographically it was compact without being cramped, extending as it did roughly from St. James Park to San Salvador Street on its north-south axis between Market and Third Streets, east-west.
Within this dozen-square block area San Joseans enjoyed four first-run movie houses, several smaller theaters, a clutch of restaraunts ranging from continental to hole-in-the-wall ethnic. All of the major department stores (Hart’s, Hale’s, Penney’s Blum’s, Roos Bros.) were there too, along with Montgomery Ward, Sears Roebuck, W.T. Grant, and a full array of five-and-dimes (Kress’s, Newberry’s Walgreen’s)
Then there were the specialty clothing shops. (Prussia’s was favored by ladies of taste and refinement) and stationers, photographers’ studios, bookstores, jewelers’ shops, travel agencies, creameries, candy shops, furniture stores. You name it, downtown had it.
And it had two other indispensibles: people and accessibility.
Doctors, lawyers, bankers, barbers, beauticians, clerks, typists, cooks, waiters, gas station attendants, bowling alley pinboys, newspapers reporters–all of us worked downtown.
Because we were there, it made sense for the street cars, and later the buses, to converge on downtown. First and Santa Clara streets was, in literal fact, the crossroads of San Jose. Buses from Santa Clara, Willow Glen, Los Gatos, Evergreen and Alumn Rock picked up and deposited passengers there. The sociological implilcations of this were enormous, and for the most part charming.
Because you and almost everybody you knew worked downtown, it was inevitable you’d meet a friend or acquaintance on your way to lunch. (And didn’t have to get in your car and drive for a half hour to find a decent place to eat) Those noontime sidewalk conversations slowed down foot traffic, but they speeded up transmission of gossip, which in turn tended to promote a sense of community. (When you know what’s going on, you know it’s your town).
Because “everybody had to go downtown for something at the same time, Mama and the girls always dressed for the occasion. (“You never know who you’re going to meet.”) Dresses, hats, even gloves on holidays were de reigeur and girls who went downtown in shorts or pedal pushers were “common.”
Youngsters of both sexes tended to be on their good behavior when downtowned unchaperoned, whether they came on the bus for a dentist’s appointment and biked in with the gang for Coke and ice cream. They knew the odds were always excellent that any over-indulgence in high spirits would be noted and reported by some promenading adult friend of the family. (“You never know who you’re going to meet.”)
In retrospect, pre-1950′s downtown was notable for what it didn’t have, too. It didn’t have adult bookstores, porno movie palaces, streetwalkers, winos and aggressive panhandlers. The occasional derelict who wandered up from the Southern Pacific freight yards generally didn’t penetrate further than North Market Street. If he did, a beat cop escorted him back across that invisibe but very real barrier.
I LIKED THE OLD DOWNTOWN, AND WHILE IT WON’T BE COMING BACK, WHAT BIDS FAIR TO TAKE ITS PLACE IS MORE THAN WELCOME. THE NEW DOWNTOWN PROMISES TO BE DYNAMIC AND EXCITING. IT’S BOUND TO BE BIGGER (VERTICALLY AS WELL AS HORIZONTALLY); WITH ANY LUCK IT WILL BE BETTER AS WELL.
Well I think that the old downtown can come back. It’ll be tweaked a little, there will be more mobile phones and the people will be a different shade of skin color, but never say never, right?
Viva downtown San Jose!