.Silicon Alleys: A 20-Year Journey Starts With One Stop

Lisa Thomas got me the job. That’s how it all started.

Somewhere in the roach-infested paradise of Cactus Club’s happy hour—every day for me and maybe a few evenings a week for her—Lisa and I carried on with the others. She knew I was a struggling freelancer and she convinced me to apply for something, anything, at Metro, the alt-weekly newspaper located in an old brick building down the street from Cactus. In those days, several people from the front office meandered over to Cactus every day, after work.

This made sense, historically speaking. Back in the ’60s, the Mercury-News reporters gathered at their own bar down the street from their own office. In any real city, you’d see this. Local newspapermen held court at a nearby watering hole and thrashed out the issues of the day. 

For example, talk to any San Francisco Chronicle reporter who was present in the ’70s. Those TV scenes with Lou Grant fishing a fifth of bourbon from the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk? That kind of thing was real. It wasn’t fiction. I know a retired reporter whose first assignment at the Chronicle was to go grab his editor from the barstool, at 2pm, because the guy couldn’t stand up. The good ol’ days, I’m told.

In Metro’s case, it was nowhere near that bad, but many, or some, of the writers were always out and about. Cactus became a workable afterwork joint. 

In addition to the rock shows at nighttime, Cactus, during its final years—1999-2002—offered the best happy hour in San Jose history. Every day, 5-9pm, there were cockroaches, washed-up strippers, fading suburban stoners, homeless punks, college dropouts, neurodivergent street people with mangy dogs, refugees from the rock scene years earlier, and even people I went to high school with. And yes, there was definitely some overlap in those categories.

Inside, our feet stuck to the floor. The pizza often tasted like a tire tread. The draft beer was perpetually stale. One evening, I watched the pizza dude smash a cockroach with the pizza tray and then put the tray right back into the oven to get a slice for someone. 

At one point, I was even spinning records every Wednesday for free drinks. Mostly easy listening schlock and bad TV themes. To do this, I carried in a turntable, placed it on the bar, and plugged it into a stereo that sat near the liquor shelf. Eagle Buckett, the self-appointed in-house technician leftover from the Marsugi’s era, would have to lend me the tools to accomplish this. Every week. From the turntable, I once even drove Andy Average out of the bar by playing utterly turgid Jerry Vale tracks. Both those guys—Eagle and Andy—are no longer with us.

Every night, the same thing unfolded. Once happy hour concluded, and as the bands began to load in for the gig at nighttime, everyone would try to linger around and stay for the show without paying. Security would have nothing of it, unless they were drunk too, of course. 

At happy hour, Lisa Thomas was the mom of the whole place. She knew I was underachieving—as a writer and in every other respect—and she sincerely wanted to help. Had she not connected me to Metro, it would never have happened. I can’t imagine what my life would have otherwise become.

That was 2001 and I began writing for Metro the following year, right about the time Cactus Club finally closed. Previous to this, I paid no serious attention to anything in San Jose. I just wanted to leave. Forever. I didn’t care about San Jose at all, that is, until I started writing about it. Fancy that.

A few years later, in April of 2005, the editors offered me my own column. It was entirely their idea. I figured it would last maybe five or six months.

As of right now, this page you’re reading has appeared in the paper every week since then. Twenty years.

This is exactly why San Jose needs more clubs like Cactus. The outcasts need somewhere to go. Plus, there might be a future columnist waiting in the wings.