It's not North Beach, but SJ has its own legacy of Beat Literature from the 1950s. And perhaps none is more stirring than this dreamy, little-remarked passage from Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, in which the narrator hitches a (literal and spiritual) ride on a southbound Xmas Eve train, beginning his SJ-to-LA journey from the sidings of the old Southern Pacific station downtown.
In 1769, Father Juan Crespi journeyed with Spanish officials to establish mission settlements in Alta (Upper) California. His diary, excerpted below, recalls Christmas '69 as “biting” cold—but abounding in good food, gifts, and jovial communion, between friends and strangers alike. From The Journal of San Diego History.
Recently retired Cato Institute policy analyst and Opp Now contributor Marc Joffe, in a tongue-in-cheek X post, announces that Bay Area's Rapid Transit District and Housing Finance Authority are merging. (And thank goodness: this is satire.) Their next project? A $100 billion subway that—if we're lucky—gets completed by 2057.
Maggie Angst, in a recent SF Chronicle article, discusses the proposal by the once-charming suburb to the north to install heavy restrictions on the overnight parking of recreational vehicles to decrease homelessness and increase available parking.
Tens of thousands of California (including Silicon Valley) millennials are exiting to red states—and with them, hundreds of thousands in annual income per household. NY Post’s Allie Griffin reports on a recent Smart Asset analysis.
A state audit found that California invested a staggering $24 billion over the past five fiscal years to address homelessness. That's about $42k per homeless person/year. And yet the homelessness crisis has worsened. Fiscally responsible pols ask: is our Housing First strategy all wrong? KTLA reports.
SJ State prof emeritus Dr. Elizabeth Weiss critiques—with James W. Springer in City Journal—today's anthropological trend of “social-justice ideology over verifiable facts.” Case in point? At SJSU, Weiss was censured (and blocked from research) for opposing reburying bones.
An abandoned construction site in LA’s Chinatown attracted a small group of squatters who proceeded to light it on fire—four times, this year alone. Neighbors begged the city for help, which, to the city’s credit, finally came. Early one morning, 130 firefighters responded when a conflagration spread to an apartment building. Karen Garcia of the LA Times reports.
Historian April Halberstadt whisks us back to Christmas a century ago in her historic San Jose home—when local agriculture was booming, the city rapidly expanding via annexations, and the faith-centered Wright family (living in now-Halberstadt’s home) making their mark on CA politics. An Opp Now exclusive.