BitterBuck Soft-Opens Today in Fountain Alley!

Cache Bouren and Tomoyo Yoshinaga will crack BitterBuck this Friday, September 4, on Fountain Alley between First and Second, next to Goodtime Bar. First Street is a construction mess, so the working entrance is on the Second Street side. The pair already run the exceptional Haberdasher and Cash Only. This room splits the day in two: pour-over coffee until 4 p.m., then amaro and spritz until 10.

There is no espresso machine. Five pour-overs and two Chromatic cold brews, beans roasted locally, can land as a boilermaker with a side of amaro. Andytown Shore Leave Hook with Sfumato Rabarbaro. Tico Huila with Cynar. Boast Mexico with Vecchio del Capo. Kenz Ethiopia with Pasubio. Chromatic decaf with Brucato Woodlands. Nitro cold brew with Tuve Fernet. Pastries come from The Midwife and the Baker. Sweet and savory pies come from Sweetdragon Baking Co.

After 4 the menu flips. The house Garibaldi is a shaken, foamy mix of orange, grapefruit, Select, and Campari. Three things sit on tap: a cold-brew martini, Chromatic nitro, and Guinness. Citrus juice stays off almost every other drink; acidity comes from verjus, the juice of unripe grapes. Small plates come out of their own kitchen. Notch Gonzalez, who did Dr. Funk, designed the interior.

Fountain Alley already holds Goodtime, Scratch Cookery, and Fox Tale. Another 7 a.m. room on that brick strip is useful if the day starts before the rest of Downtown San Jose wakes up, and useful again if the night wants bitter rather than sweet. Soft openings fill fast in a space this small. Walk in from Second, order the Garibaldi or a pour-over with Cynar, and decide which half of the day belongs there.

Instagram: @bitterbucksj

Source: Scott Firestone from San José: Downtown Dwellers ESTD. 2009

Downtown Parking Lot Beside Hammer Theatre Gets a Final Yes for 168 Affordable Homes

City planning staff signed off September 2 on a seven-story building at 143 South Third Street that will replace a surface lot next to Hammer Theatre Center. Sobrato Organization owns the land. Pacific West Communities will build it. The approved plan calls for 168 apartments: 133 for low-income households, 33 for very-low-income households, and two market-rate manager units. In Santa Clara County this year that means roughly $113,700 for a single low-income renter and $71,950 for a very-low-income one, with higher caps for a family of four.

Five floors of housing will sit on a five-story garage, a block from the San Antonio light-rail station and a short walk from SJSU, restaurants, and the Paseo de San Antonio. Sobrato bought the parcel in 2010 with denser housing in mind. An earlier luxury-office idea never left the paper. This version uses Density Bonus Law and SB 330 streamlining, which is why the director-level hearing, not a long council fight, closed the file.

Neighbors at the hearing pushed back on Saturday construction starting at 7 a.m. The same voices asked for a living edge along the Paseo instead of a blank garage wall. Pacific West’s Lauren Alexander told the room the team is looking at artwork and a rotating gallery on that side. Groundbreaking has no public date yet. The developers want a two-year build if extended hours hold.

San Jose still has a state assignment north of 62,000 housing units to plan through 2031.

City planning agendas: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/planning-building-code-enforcement/planning-division

Source: The Mercury News

SoFA’s First Friday of September Puts Art in the Street From 5-10

South First Fridays returns Friday, September 4, from 5 to 10 p.m. across the SoFA District and a few rooms beyond it. Galleries stay open late with free entry. Street Mrkt sets up on South First Street in front of Anno Domini and KALEID, which is the outdoor spine of the night: painters, glass, ceramics, zines, henna, a music bus, and three food trucks. 3 Brothers Kitchen, 3 Hermanos Mexican Grill, and Me Oi Vietnamese Kitchen will feed the block. Street parking is free after 6. City garages at South Third and San Carlos still offer the usual 90-minute window.

Anno Domini at 366 South First will hang Brandan Styles’s “Blissful Rituals for a Mad World.” KALEID at 320 South First opens Judy Rookstool’s “Bring It” with a reception from 5 to 9. MACLA shows Viviana Paredes. Phantom Galleries at the Pierce apartments gives Force129 a solo called “Reimagined.” The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles has Samantha Saldaña in “A Mi Manera / My Own Way.” Chopsticks Alley Gallery pairs Charlene Tan’s “Pearls Remember” with a 7 p.m. ekphrastic poetry set. Works/San José opens “Overtime: the Work of Living,” a 38-artist look at what people do when nobody is clocking them. Art Ark on South Sixth and Machu Picchu Gallery at the Citadel extend the walk into Martha Gardens.

For live music, San Jose Jazz runs the SJZ Break Room from 6 p.m., with the Michael Webster Quartet at 6:15 and an open jam from 7 to 9 for anyone who brought an instrument. Opera San José will put Nicole Koh, Courtney Miller, Micah Perry, and Ethan Chu on First Street in two short sets, plus lemonade, popcorn, and a scavenger hunt that can turn into free Don Giovanni tickets. A few blocks north, the San José Museum of Art’s own First Friday, “Rhinestone Skies,” runs 6 to 9 with drag, poetry, and kids’ tables if the walk needs a second destination.

CURATUS still produces the night as a spend-it-with-the-artists event, not a ticketed festival. Buy a print. Tip the trucks. Sit through the jam. September 4 is the first First Friday of the fall season, which means the weather usually cooperates and the sidewalks fill early. Start at First and San Carlos and walk south until the galleries thin out.

Full lineup and map: https://www.southfirstfridays.com/2026/09/september-4-2026-south-first-fridays-artwalksj-street-mrkt-indie-urban-art-faire/

SJMA First Fridays that same night: https://sjmusart.org/event/first-fridays-rhinestone-skies

Fugetsu Packs Another Japanese Market Into the South Bay, and San Jose Already Has a Seat at the Table

Fugetsu Japanese Market & Goods has settled into a roughly 1,600-square-foot shop at 3409 El Camino Real in Santa Clara, giving the Osaka-born brand a third South Bay foothold after its takeout counter on Moorpark Avenue in San Jose and its okonomiyaki kitchen inside Rokko in Sunnyvale. Westsiders who already duck into the Suite 20 shop at 4342 Moorpark Avenue for boxed lunches now have a second grab-and-go stop a short drive north. The Santa Clara store soft-opened in March, then spent weeks selling only snacks and collectibles while the city sorted a permit issue. Fresh bento, onigiri, sushi, and desserts returned in mid-July, and the shop has kept daily hours around 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

The new room sits in Nobili Plaza, a Biagini Properties strip with frontage on El Camino Real and parking right at the door. Mapo BBQ already shares the center, and ChaHalo tea, jeweler Joyalukkas, and Indo-Chinese restaurant Garam Mirchi have posted coming-soon signs. Inside Fugetsu, the mix feels less like a full supermarket and more like a Japanese department-store food hall shrunk to neighborhood size: premade plates from local kitchens, packaged snacks and drinks, plus shelves of anime goods, toys, and trading cards. That hybrid grew out of a pandemic rewrite. The company had planned a traditional sit-down restaurant for its second U.S. site, then rebuilt the idea around takeout meals and packaged favorites once dining rooms shut down.

The Santa Clara opening arrives in the middle of a wider South Bay run of Japanese market concepts. In April, restaurateur Lily Peng and the Taro San team opened Yutori at 3375 El Camino Real in Palo Alto, taking over the old Corner Bakery Cafe with matcha and coffee drinks, house-made pastries, and a convenience-store aisle of imported snacks, produce, and bento. Farther south, Downtown San Jose finally got a true grocer again when Sakura Market opened at 184 South Market Street, next to Spartan Village on the Paseo. The Osaka Marketplace team filled a long-empty storefront with imported groceries, cosmetics, a matcha counter, a self-serve ramen station, a sushi buffet sold by weight, and plans for a sake and beer bar.

That Downtown location matters as much as the food. San Jose’s core lost its last conventional grocery when Safeway closed in 2019, and residents, hotel guests, and SJSU students had to leave the neighborhood for everyday staples. Sakura will not replace a full supermarket, but it puts rice balls, sashimi, snacks, and household goods within walking distance of the Signia hotel and the Paseo. Pair that with Fugetsu’s existing West San Jose market and the brand’s Sunnyvale dining room, and the city now sits inside a tighter web of Japanese retail instead of watching it collect only on the Peninsula.

A grand opening stretch at the Santa Clara Fugetsu runs Friday, September 5 through Monday, September 7, with samples and giveaways. After that, keep both local addresses in the rotation: 4342 Moorpark Avenue in San Jose for a quick Westside pickup, and 3409 El Camino Real when the drive up El Camino makes more sense. Downtown shoppers can walk into Sakura at 184 South Market Street, Suite 120, most days from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

Levitt on Location Brings Free Music to Lake Cunningham on September 25

Lake Cunningham Park will host another free outdoor concert on Friday, September 25, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Cypress Pavilion. The evening forms part of the Fridays at the Lake series and features two sets centered on powerful female voices and Latin rhythms.

Conjunto Trujillo opens with a Selena tribute led by vocalist Melissa Garay, drawing on Afro-Caribbean and Latin dance styles. Discos Resaca follows with its women-fronted Cumbia collective, whose members represent roots across Mexico, Central America, Peru, Puerto Rico, and the United States.

Attendees can expect food trucks, beer and wine for purchase, kids’ activities, and a display of restored lowriders owned by women through the United Lowrider Council. Free parking is available, and the lakeside setting invites lawn chairs, blankets, and picnics.

The event is free and open to all ages, offering a relaxed way to spend a Friday evening outdoors before the series continues through early October.

For the full Fridays at the Lake schedule, visit the series Eventbrite page.

Pink Coolers on Wheels Already Cross Downtown. The 350-Pound Ones Want the Bike Lane.

Coco’s pink-and-red boxes have been rolling through Downtown San Jose since April, pausing at lights like any other pedestrian and dropping coded meals at stoops within about two miles. Serve Robotics joined later. Together they already feed Uber Eats and DoorDash orders from spots such as Punjab Cafe on East Santa Clara Street and Sixth Street Burger. Bobby Saini at Punjab now loads butter chicken and garlic naan into a compartment several times a night. The city never signed a formal contract with either firm. Staff waved the fleets through under older policies about fewer car trips and lower emissions, then called the stretch a learning period.

Council will likely vote this fall on actual rules: permits, insurance, $200 to $250 a year per robot, and the right to cap fleets or yank a permit if machines block curb ramps, bus zones, or bike lanes. Until then, the only speed cap on the sidewalk is an informal 5 mph, a number reporters have had to jog to match. Coco units weigh about 100 pounds empty. Serve’s weigh 161. DoorDash wants to put 350-pound Dot robots, roughly a tenth the size of a car, into bike lanes at speeds that can reach 20 mph. City staff decided those machines were too slow for car lanes. Cyclists get the experiment instead.

Disability advocates have already named the obvious collision: a stalled cooler on a curb cut, a walker forced into the street. Sheri Burns, formerly of the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center, also called grocery-by-robot a possible game changer for people who cannot easily leave home, and she praised Coco’s BlindSquare mapping of cracked sidewalks. At La Victoria Taqueria, staff found one unit flipped on its back. Arturo Litvin watched his Sixth Street Burger order arrive by robot, then noticed Uber Eats refunded the tip. Human couriers still do the bulk of the work. The companies will not say how many of those shifts they expect to erase.

San Francisco locked robots down in 2017 before they spread. Fremont is letting DoorDash run Dots under an encroachment permit that expires in March, with a 16 mph cap and a $1 million insurance floor. San Jose chose the opposite sequence: sidewalks first, ordinance later. Coco’s government lead says a frozen bot on a sidewalk would be rare and short-lived, and field techs are supposed to arrive within 30 minutes. Guadalupe River Trail stays off limits. Willow Glen is already on Coco’s near-term map as the next expansion opportunity.

Source: The Mercury News

Fairgrounds Expo Hall Needs Hands on 9/11, Not Speeches

September 11, 2026, lands on a Friday and marks 25 years since the attacks. 9/11 Day, the nonprofit started by family members after that morning, is treating the date as a national workday. Fifty-plus cities will pack shelf-stable meals in one coordinated push, aiming for more than 17 million servings and tens of thousands of volunteers. San Jose’s piece happens inside Expo Hall at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, 344 Tully Road. The boxes leave for Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, which already feeds people through hundreds of partner sites in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

Last year’s hall packed on the order of 200,000 meals with several hundred volunteers. Corporate teams often fill the assembly lines; many of those seats are reserved and sponsored at $250 a person to cover food costs. What the organizers say they still need, urgently, is the Event Support Team: people who do not stand at a packing table the whole shift but keep the machine from stalling. Table captains teach and pace each line. Heavy lifters and runners restock ingredients and haul finished cases, work that can mean 50-pound boxes. Guest services check people in. Set-up and break-down crews open and close the room.

Those support roles require volunteers 18 and older, a one-hour Zoom training about a week beforehand, and roughly four hours on site. Prior years ran a morning block around 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., with a shorter cleanup window after noon. Confirm the 2026 shift on the signup form before blocking the calendar. Parking sits behind Expo Hall.

Second Harvest’s latest client survey found nearly everyone it serves cutting grocery spending to cover rent and medical bills. A Friday morning in a fairgrounds hall will not fix that math but it will put sealed meals onto local trucks instead of leaving the anniversary of 9/11 as a minute of silence and a flag at half staff.

Sign up for Event Support in San Jose (18+): https://volunteer.911day.org/projects/62266f60-e37b-4c5a-a1cf-74b90128cb96

Second Harvest food locator and hotline: https://www.shfb.org/get-food/

Council Directs a Closer Look at Neighborhood Housing Density

San Jose City Council spent hours on Aug. 18 hearing from residents before voting 8-3 to study several density options rather than lock in a single number. Staff will now analyze 16, 24 and 32 dwelling units per acre in Residential Neighborhood areas that currently sit at about eight units per acre, along with parking standards. A finished proposal is slated to return for a final decision late in 2027.

The debate sits inside the four-year review of Envision San José 2040. Planners had floated a jump to 32 units per acre on most of the city’s residential land as a way to add “missing middle” homes: duplexes, fourplexes, townhomes and small multifamily buildings that sit between a single house and a large apartment block. Mixed-use corridors and Urban Residential areas, including parts of Downtown San Jose, also appeared in the package with higher proposed ranges and extra stories.

State housing targets explain the urgency. San Jose must plan for more than 62,000 additional units between 2023 and 2031. Production so far has lagged that pace, and large apartment projects have struggled to find financing. City housing officials told the council that smaller, scattered buildings can pencil out without heavy public subsidy and can give middle-income households more choices.

Neighbors who filled the chamber raised traffic, street parking and the look of established blocks. Several council members asked staff to treat the city as a collection of different places rather than one uniform map. The study period will include more outreach, environmental review and work on design standards so any future rules can respect existing street patterns while still adding homes.

Anyone who cares about where the next generation of San Jose families will live now has more than a year to follow the details. The city that already mixes Downtown towers with tree-lined streets is trying to decide how those two scales can grow together. That conversation, handled carefully, is how San Jose keeps room for teachers, nurses, restaurant crews and young households without losing the neighborhoods people already love.

Additional information on the General Plan Four-Year Review is available through the City of San Jose Planning Division.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

Santana Row Turns September into a Month of $25 Prix-Fixe Lunches for a Good Cause

September brings a practical reason to leave the office for a proper midday meal when Santana Row launches Let’s Do Lunch, a month-long Taste The Row event running Monday through Friday from September 1 to 30. Sixteen restaurants will each serve a $25 prix-fixe lunch that includes one appetizer and one entrée, giving diners an easy way to sample new spots while supporting World Central Kitchen.

The participating lineup covers a wide range of flavors, from Augustine and Dumpling Time to Fogo de Chão, Ozumo Sushi, Pizza Antica, Straits, Zazil, and more. The promotion builds on last year’s successful Taste The Row dinners and shifts the focus to weekday lunches so more people can take a real break during the workday.

Every lunch helps World Central Kitchen, the organization founded by Chef José Andrés that delivers fresh meals to communities facing disasters and crises. With an average cost of about five dollars per meal, the donations generated during the month will stretch far. Menus, hours, and availability differ by restaurant, and tax, tip, and drinks sit outside the fixed price.

Santana Row already draws people for shopping and evening dining. This September program simply makes the middle of the day more appealing and purposeful. Full details and the current list of restaurants appear at www.SantanaRow.com.

Holland Partner Group Buys the Stevens Creek Corner for 575 Apartments

Holland Partner Group closed on the 4.7-acre corner at 3896 Stevens Creek Boulevard this week, paying $22.3 million according to documents filed August 26 at the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office. Local families that include Joseph Rubino Jr. sold the land. The purchase locks in a project the city already entitled: two eight-story buildings with 575 apartments at Saratoga Avenue and Stevens Creek, a few blocks from Northlake Drive and about two miles west of Valley Fair and Santana Row.

Building 1 will face Saratoga and hold 264 units. Building 2 will front Stevens Creek near Northlake with 311. Twenty-nine apartments are slated for very-low-income households, a band the state currently sets at $71,950 for one person and $102,750 for a family of four in Santa Clara County, against area medians of $143,850 and $205,500. Ground floors will carry about 13,600 square feet of retail, split 7,600 and 6,000 between the two buildings. Plans also call for roughly 25,000 square feet of amenity space, including fitness rooms, co-working, clubrooms, lobbies, and podium pool decks. TCA Architects drew the metal, screen, stone, and stucco faces. A public plaza is mapped to the busy corner.

That corner used to be headed in the opposite direction. Cypress Equities had an entitled 882,000-square-foot office and retail scheme that once included a large Life Time athletic club. Office demand collapsed, and Holland flipped the site to housing. San Jose made the project its first approval under the city’s streamlined ministerial ordinance in December 2025, cutting a process that often takes about 20 months down to eight. The count later grew from earlier 532- and 540-unit versions to 575. Existing low-rise shops, including Hokkaido Buffet, are slated for demolition. Across the boulevard, CRP Affordable Housing is already building 59 income-restricted units at 3941 Stevens Creek.

The Stevens Creek Urban Village Plan asked for exactly this kind of swap: parking lots and strip frontage turned into housing, shops, and sidewalks wide enough that people might linger. Holland’s filings promise a stronger pedestrian edge and a Class IV bike lane along the project frontage. Westsiders who drive that intersection every day will notice the height first. The more useful test comes later, when the retail actually opens and the 29 below-market units lease to the households the paperwork names.

Construction timing and cost have not been published. The deed is recorded. The drawings are approved. The next visible change on that corner will be the wrecking of the buffet and the start of two towers where an office campus never arrived.

Source: The Mercury News