Monday, May 19, 2014

St. James Park Food Trucks!

I think we can all agree that there is a lot of work to be done to restore St. James Park, perhaps the park with the most history in all of San Jose. With several new development projects happening on the periphery of the park, we need to do everything we can to change this from an encampment for the homeless to one of Downtown's key attractions.

Ryan Sebastian, the proprietor behind Treatbot, Moveable Feast, and the San Jose Taco Festival of Innovation, is planning to bring lunch-time food trucks to St. James Park as soon as June. Instead of a regular weekly food truck event, he is envisioning something a bit different. He is trying to get a Food Truck "pod" in the park that would feature lunch trucks daily. I think this would go a long way to reducing the non-homeless to homeless ration in the park and improving the quality of the community there, especially in combination with other improvements being discussed like a music pavilion. I wish him the best of luck!

Oh and while we are on the topic of parks, check out this great article in Think Bigger San Jose about improving Plaza de Cesar Chavez.

Source: SVBJ


4 comments:

  1. Hello, Joshua.

    I’m an English language learner, and I usually read blogs to learn new English words and expressions. I just ran into your post today and there’s something you didn’t address in your post which called my attention. I must clarify first, though, that I’m obviously unaware of how things work up in San Jose, CA because I don’t live there—I actually live out of US territory.

    It’s a good thing you guys as the Downtown San Jose community want to “embellish” St. James Park, but what are you going to do with the less fortunate, that is, the homeless? I mean, your post suggests that by bringing food trucks over to the park, you’ll send the homeless away.

    It seems obvious to me that if the homeless wander around St. James Park, it’s because they have nowhere to go.

    Does the San Jose City Council have a plan for the homeless?

    Thank you.

    Best regards,

    Rodrigo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry. It should read: “I must clarify first, though, that I’m obviously unaware of how things are done* up in San Jose, CA…”

    Regards,

    Rodrigo.

    ReplyDelete
  3. send those stinkies to san fran where they belong! the homeless situation is SJ is getting ridiculous

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  4. Actually there is a proposal to bring more people to the park by opening a cafe which would be staffed with homeless people in a training program (model projects exist in Sacramento and in Delancey Street in San Francisco). The idea is to bring people into the park from the surrounding area. The homeless would not be shoved out, just that their numbers would be not be so obvious because other people would use the park as well. And, of course, the drug dealers, would not to do their business in the park with so many witnesses around so they would leave (as per the Sacramento model).

    ReplyDelete