Inspired by the blues, I recently spent a glorious hour slithering through one of the greatest stripmall buildings in San Jose history.
Everyone native knows this strip, even if no one can remember whether it’s San Jose or Santa Clara. Doesn’t matter. The building transcends all boundaries between highbrow and lowbrow, urban and suburban, punk and easy listening.
The roll call included Stevens Creek Surplus and A Slice of New York Pizza, plus a smoke shop and California Sewing & Vacuums. The vertical neon sign above the defunct paint store was long gone, as was the Ancient and Mystical Order of JJ’s Blues Cafe, where ghosts of BB King, John Lee Hooker, Greg Allman and countless others stalked the landscape. Part of the building was even recently painted.
Before we get into the particulars of my recent visit, the building’s paint job is worth mentioning, proof that if things are done the right way, if people give a damn, we don’t need frauds from the Redevelopment Agency and their bogus “façade improvement” nonsense, the goal of which was to dumb down the whole city and make every stripmall look the same.
By comparison, the Stevens Creek Surplus building looked authentic and human, as if real people actually shopped there. Nowhere did I see cookie-cutter suburban-village monstrosities that bureaucrats and “land use consultants” have force-crammed onto the whole city. There is no job title more bogus than “land use consultant.” It’s just another phrase for “Destroyer of Movie Theaters, Flea Markets and Bowling Alleys.” You can often spot these guys. If you see someone with bad JCPenny slacks, a clipboard and a dress shirt that looks like graph paper from high school, he might be a land use consultant.
But I digress.
Since it was easily 20 years since I last crossed the threshold of Steven Creek Surplus, I ventured in for a few seconds. It hadn’t changed very much. And that was a good thing. The last time I showed up was the time I bought a Greek fisherman’s hat. I still have that hat. And Stevens Creek Surplus still sells them. Perhaps those hats were the only items in the store made in Greece, I don’t know, but throughout the rest of the place I saw more “made in USA” stickers than I’d ever seen in one building.
The store was fully stocked and ready for consumption. Aisles and aisles of boots and camping gear. Dickies, Ben Davis and Timberland. Sweaters, knives, hats, buttons, patches and Special Forces baseball caps. Sure, it wasn’t my crowd—never would I own a pair of “tactical camo pants”—but that didn’t matter. If you haven’t been to Stevens Creek Surplus in 20 years, go back. It’s fun.
Next door, or actually in the same building, was A Slice of New York, which used to be an Italian deli, although I can’t even remember what decade that was. While waiting for my pizza, I looked at walls of artifacts from the Big Apple plus an entire display of Metro “Best Of” awards. The barstools were colored with logos from the Rangers, the Islanders, and—gasp!—the New Jersey Devils. Being a San Jose native, I immediately sat on the New Jersey stool.
A Slice of New York went deeper than the pizza, of course. It’s now a true co-op. Everyone looks out for everyone else. Outside, signs on the window updated regulars on the status of a local unhoused person that everyone knew. A “Wall of Shame” even depicted various douchebags 86ed from the place.
Just down the stripmall, the huge vacuum and sewing store was readying itself for the day ahead, while the smoke shop next door catered to the expected folks. One dude wearing dark sunglasses in broad daylight departed the store and then circled the parking lot before walking down the sidewalk, apparently to make sure he wouldn’t be identified leaving the smoke shop.
Ultimately, I must repeat that this is not nostalgia for the past. Especially in this part of town, multiple layers of the past compress into the current moment. It’s almost mystical.
As a result, the ghosts of JJ’s Blues Cafe were with me all the way home.
