SoFA Street Fair Takes Over First Street on Sunday

SoFA Street Fair Fall 26 lands Sunday, September 27, from 2 p.m. to about 7:30 p.m. across South First Street and the side streets that make up the SoFA District in Downtown San Jose. The posted grid puts bands, vendors, skate demos, burlesque, and independent wrestling on eight stages at once.

Pobladores Stage and Pobladores Dos sit at 501 South First. Silver Truck Stage is at 454 South First. Project X is at 22 East San Salvador. Haberdasher, 43 West San Salvador, runs rotating burlesque sets from 4 p.m. onward. UGWA Stage at 25 East William hosts the wrestling card, including a title match between Dave Dyra and Journey Fatu at 7. SoFA Market at 387 South First keeps the vendor row. Caravan Stage at 50 West San Salvador closes the night with Sad Boy Sinister at 7:30, while Philthy Dronez Y La Brigada De La Cumbia takes Pobladores at the same time. Gunderson High School Concert Band opens Silver Truck at 2. Skatepops and El Guapo split Project X in the mid-afternoon.

The fair shares the weekend with ILLO Mart two blocks west inside South Hall. Anyone already downtown for prints can walk east and catch a set without a second parking hunt. Start at First and San Salvador and move with the sound. The schedule lives at https://sofafall26.sched.com/

ILLO Mart Packs South Hall With 250-Plus Illustrators This Weekend

San José Made will run the 2nd annual ILLO Mart on Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days inside South Hall at 435 South Market Street in Downtown San Jose. Admission is free. Last year’s first edition proved the city could fill a hall with working illustrators. This year’s floor holds more than 250 booths. Vendor slots sold out. The first 1,000 people through the door each day get an event-only 4-by-6 notepad drawn by @poxei.

The back of the hall is set up for people who want to make something instead of only buying prints. Figure drawing runs all day, first come first served, clothed models, short and long poses. Charcoal and paper are on loan while they last. Jacquelin De Leon leads a $10 digital portrait class at 12:30 both days and a $20 watercolor class at 2:30. Malisa Suchanya’s wooden-mushroom painting slots cycle through the afternoon. Sunday only, Elda The of Thousand Skies teaches 4-by-6 rubber-stamp carving for $20, noon to 2 p.m. and 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., age 12 and up. Four artists run a stamp rally; spend $8 at their tables and collect a set of riso prints at booth E406 while supplies last.

South Hall sits next to the Convention Center garage. Street parking is free on Sunday and the VTA light rail and buses stop within two blocks. No outside food or drink.

Details and workshop reservations: https://www.sanjosemade.com/pages/illo-mart-2026

Kensuke Takahashi Opens His First Northern California Solo Show at Empire Seven

Yokohama painter and muralist Kensuke Takahashi will return to the wall he painted last year, then step inside Empire Seven Studios for Yaoyorozu｜八百万, his first solo exhibition in Northern California. The opening reception runs Saturday, October 3, from 6 to 9 p.m. The show stays up through November 29 at 525 North Seventh Street, Suite 10, on the edge of Japantown.

Takahashi has worked full time as an artist since 2005. During the 2025 San Jose Walls festival he covered the exterior next to the gallery with a family voyage told entirely through Shinto figures. No human bodies appear. A monkey in samurai armor, close to Sarutahiko Ōkami, leads the party with a gourd of sake. A tiger, the Tora, wears a shimenawa rope that marks the line between ordinary ground and sacred space and stands in for a mother’s protection. An egret, the Sagi, carries a taiko drum wrapped in a child’s indigo handkerchief. A three-legged crow, Yatagarasu, travels as a stand-in for a first child and a guide. Takahashi later said the wall came from missing home while painting abroad, then left room for anyone else to invent the rest of the story.

Yaoyorozu, eight million, is an old Japanese way of talking about abundance and the spirits that can live in objects, weather, memory, and people. The gallery is treating the indoor work as a closer look at the same world that already sits on the brick outside. Limited signed prints of the mural will be available; Empire Seven asked collectors to email the studio for the pre-sale list.

Juan Carlos Araujo and Jennifer Ahn have run Empire Seven since 2008, first as a Japantown storefront, later as the producers of San Jose Walls, the local arm of the Worldwide Walls network. Bringing a Yokohama artist back for a two-month solo run is consistent with how they have worked: put a foreign language of myth on a San Jose wall, then give the same artist a room where people can stand still. Walk the mural first if the timing works, then go inside on October 3. Details and collector inquiries live at www.empiresevenstudios.com.

PWHL San Jose Gets a National TV Window Before Opening Night

The Professional Women’s Hockey League locked in its first full-season U.S. television deal with Scripps Sports, which means PWHL San Jose (now called the NorCal Rumble) will arrive at SAP Center already visible in more than 128 million households. ION will carry a Saturday Game of the Week. Scripps Sports Network, the free streaming channel on Roku, Prime Video, Tubi and similar platforms, will add two more national games each week. ION also keeps the Walter Cup Finals and one extra playoff series. Every game will still stream on YouTube and PWHL.com outside Canada.

That package matters here because the local team has not played a minute yet. The league announced San Jose on May 19 as the twelfth franchise and the first in California, part of a four-city expansion class with Detroit, Hamilton, and Las Vegas. Home ice is SAP Center. Practice ice is Sharks Ice. General manager and head coach Troy Ryan has begun signing the draft class; defender Laila Edwards, taken fourth overall in June, put pen to a three-year deal this month. Training camps open November 18. Regular-season puck drop is expected later this year, with the NHL calendar still dictating exact dates around the Sharks and the arena’s renovation work.

Season-ticket deposits of $50 per seat have been collecting since May, time-stamped for priority when packages go on sale. Single-game tickets have not dropped. A nickname is still pending; Hammerheads has been floated in public. What the TV deal buys in the meantime is a Saturday habit. A new club in a busy building cannot wait until the first faceoff to explain who it is. Three national windows a week give casual viewers a reason to find the logo before they find the box office.

San Jose already runs an NHL team, an AHL team, and one of the country’s larger youth hockey footprints. Adding a PWHL club makes the city the only U.S. market with all three rungs on the same civic ice. Interest forms and merch live at https://www.thepwhl.com/en/teams/san-jose.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

San Jose’s Short Film Festival Returns to Santana Row for Its 18th Year

The San Jose International Short Film Festival will occupy Cinemark CinéArts at Santana Row from Thursday, October 22, through Sunday, October 25. Organizers are calling it the largest edition yet, with more than 150 shorts from around the world packed into more than 20 screening blocks. MovieMaker has listed SJSFF among the top 50 festivals worth the entry fee. For four days the recliner seats on Olsen Drive become the city’s window onto work that rarely gets a commercial run.

Thursday used to mean opening night only. This year a new Thursday Pass adds three afternoon blocks before the 7:30 p.m. premiere: And So It Begins at 2 p.m. (drama, comedy, animation, world cinema), A Brave New World at 3 p.m. (avant-garde comedy and drama), and World Cinema One at 4:30 p.m. (seven foreign-language shorts). The same pass covers opening night. Later days split into familiar lanes: two comedy programs including Make ’Em Laugh After Dark, science fiction under The World Beyond, suspense under I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This, plus extra world cinema, documentary, animation, and family blocks. Filmmaker Q&As and nightly receptions sit around the screenings.

A single block ticket is listed at $10 to $15. Day passes that cover every program on one calendar day run $30 to $50. The $175 VIP All-Access pass unlocks every block, the opening-night afterparty, the VIP lounge, a festival shirt, the awards screening, and a commemorative lanyard. Guest of Honor details were still pending as of mid-September.

The theater itself is 4K DCP with surround sound, which is more than most shorts ever see outside a festival. Eighteen years in, SJSFF remains one of the most unique movie experiences of the year. Passes and the full block schedule are at https://sjsff.com/tickets/.

OpenAI Looking at a Power-Heavy Office in San Jose

OpenAI has been circling a 70,000-square-foot building at 2950 Zanker Road in North San Jose, a box whose real prize is not the floor plate but the 19 megawatts of electrical capacity already wired into it. People familiar with the talks said a lease with landlord Peninsula Land & Capital may already be signed. OpenAI did not comment. Roger Fields’ firm bought the property in 2024 after Electric Hydrogen had poured extra power into a site that already sat on a fat electrical feed.

That feed is why the rent under discussion was reported above $6 per square foot per month, more than double the recent asking average for North San Jose research-and-development space. Brokers have been listing ordinary R&D product in the low-to-mid twos. A tenant willing to pay triple that rate is not shopping for cubicles. Colliers has marketed the same address as high-performance industrial space with lab rooms, a data-center designation, five grade-level doors, a fenced yard of nearly 21,000 square feet, and 19 megawatts available, language aimed at hyperscale computing and heavy manufacturing rather than a conventional office user.

North San Jose has spent decades as a semiconductor and R&D corridor along Zanker, First Street, and the airport fringe. Vacancy in the submarket has been elevated while companies handed back older campuses, yet the buildings that already hold serious power have not sat idle. Figure AI, Credo, Archer Aviation, and others have taken large blocks nearby. The same shortage of ready megawatts that pushed Bloom Energy and Heron Power into expansion mode is now pulling AI names toward industrial shells instead of glass campuses. OpenAI has also been linked to a much larger Mountain View office deal; a Zanker lease would be a different kind of footprint, smaller in people and larger in watts.

San Jose officials have treated data-center and high-load users as a tax and utility revenue play when the projects stay inside existing industrial districts. Nineteen megawatts is modest next to the multi-gigawatt campuses OpenAI has announced in Ohio and Georgia, which is part of the point. A 70,000-square-foot building already on the grid can come online without a new substation fight. If the lease closes, North San Jose will have another reminder that the next wave of Silicon Valley demand is arriving first where the wires already are.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

Symphony San Jose Opens Its 25th Anniversary Season With America at 250

The California Theatre at 345 South First Street will open Symphony San Jose’s 25th anniversary season on Saturday, October 3 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, October 4 at 2:30 p.m. The program, titled THE NEW WORLD: America at 250, ties the orchestra’s own milestone to the nation’s 250th year through three works that travel from the mythic West to a brand-new Bay Area premiere and on to Dvořák’s most famous symphony. The same season also marks the California Theatre’s 100th anniversary and 150 years since San Jose first heard an orchestral concert, so the weekend lands with extra weight for anyone who cares about Downtown San Jose’s cultural life.

Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid Suite still does what it has done since 1938: pull folk tunes, open-sky harmonies, and gunslinger swagger into a few tightly scored scenes. After that, pianist Joyce Yang will give the Bay Area its first hearing of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Rhapsody on America, a work Symphony San Jose co-commissioned. Leshnoff wrote the rhapsody as a lyrical, rhythmically restless meditation on the American spirit, and Yang has already introduced it elsewhere in the commissioning consortium. The evening then turns to Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” composed during his years in the United States and still the piece most people reach for when they want landscape, longing, and a big-hearted finish in the same hour.

Ken-David Masur will conduct both performances. The German-born American maestro, recently concluding a long Milwaukee Symphony tenure and a frequent guest with major U.S. orchestras, brings a clear beat and a taste for programs that mix familiar landmarks with living composers. Yang, a Van Cliburn silver medalist known for color and power at the keyboard, sits at the center of the Leshnoff. Together they give the anniversary opener a guest list that matches the occasion.

Saturday night adds an Opening Night Fanfare before the concert: a complimentary sip of champagne, live music, ballet dancers, and extra performances in the lobby as the house fills. Music Notes talks start one hour before each concert inside the auditorium. Adult ticket buyers can add guests age 17 and under at half price; single tickets run $35 to $125, fees included. The whole program lasts about one hour and 50 minutes with intermission.

Tickets and youth pricing details are at www.symphonysanjose.org or 408.286.2600.

Kids Day in the Park Fills Plaza de César Chávez This Afternoon

Bay Area Parent’s Kids Day in the Park lands on the same Downtown lawn that hosts Music in the Park, and the gates open at 11 a.m. today, Sunday, September 20. Entry is through the San Carlos Street side of Plaza de César Chávez, next to the Quetzalcoatl statue. Advance tickets cost nothing. A walk-up ticket at the door runs $20, so reserve a free pass before leaving the house if that is still an option.

Oakland’s Alphabet Rockers headline the stage. Kaitlin McGaw and Tommy Soulati Shepherd built the group in 2007 around hip-hop that talks to kids without talking down to them, and the catalog now carries both a Grammy for Best Children’s Music Album and an Emmy. The set is the musical center of a day built for strollers and short attention spans: bounce houses, booths from local organizations and businesses, food trucks, and whatever other activities the organizers packed onto the grass.

A few house rules will save a wasted trip. Outside food, drinks, and water bottles stay in the car. The festival is mostly cashless. Pets other than service animals are out. Chairs are not allowed; blankets smaller than 6 by 8 feet can go on the lawn. Bags should be a clear tote no larger than 12 by 12 by 8 inches or a small clutch. Strollers and wheelchairs are fine, and the plaza is ADA accessible if you flag limited seating in advance. Re-entry is not offered, so treat the afternoon as one continuous stay. Parking sits in nearby garages, including CityView Plaza off Park Avenue and the underground lot at 55 West San Fernando Street.

Downtown San Jose does not get many Sundays that combine a free kids’ festival with a Grammy-winning act on the city’s most familiar outdoor stage. Grab the free ticket, pack a small blanket, and let the bounce houses and the Rockers do the rest. Reserve passes and read the full bag policy at https://www.caltix.com/e/kids-in-the-park-2026/tickets.

Ignite Takes Over the Old Sushi Confidential Corner in San Pedro Square

The sign that once pointed San Pedro Square visitors toward Sushi Confidential or the SAP Center has been covered. In its place, Ignite has already started a soft opening at 26 North San Pedro Street, two weeks after the sushi house served its last rolls at the end of August. Owner Hima Adusumilli is betting the same patio that fed concert and hockey crowds can hold a different kind of night: fire-grilled skewers, smash burgers, wings, bowls, and a cocktail list meant to keep people at the table after dinner.

The room runs about 3,700 square feet inside with a patio of roughly 3,500 square feet opening onto the car-free square. Head chef Felipe Chen is running an early menu that includes an Ignite Smash Burger, loaded nachos, truffle Parmesan fries, balsamic wings, and seafood baskets, with more dishes still arriving. Soft-opening hours have been dinner-first: 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 4 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday, and 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday. A grand opening is set for October 2. The bar poured 11 cocktails and 15 beer taps at launch, and Adusumilli has said nightlife, DJs, and security will follow once the kitchen settles.

About 15 people work the floor and line so far, including eight who stayed on from Sushi Confidential. That continuity matters on a block where regulars already know the faces. Randy Musterer, who built the Sushi Confidential group, framed the exit as a shift toward catering, live action stations, hand-roll bars, and new restaurants elsewhere in the Bay Area, not a retreat from San Jose. The Willow Glen dining room, Campbell and Morgan Hill spots, and the SAP Center stand all remain. Corporate events simply grew faster than one downtown dining room could serve.

A second change is forming a few doors away. The Silk Route Bar and Kitchen will take the two-story, 6,800-square-foot space at 17 North San Pedro Street, the former Olla Cocina site that later hosted a short-lived Bar Tako pop-up and a cancelled Santos Mexican steakhouse plan. Jasbir Singh and Mandeep Jandir, who already run The Brit Sports Pub around the corner, have put nearly $1 million into an upscale Indian dining room and about 25 jobs. They have aimed the concept at a gap Downtown San Jose still has: a full-service Indian kitchen with a real cocktail program, not another quick lunch counter.

Turnover on this stretch can look like loss until the next kitchen lights the patio. San Pedro Square still functions as one of the few places in the city where dinner, a late second round, and a walkable crowd occupy the same block. If Ignite holds the night and Silk Route fills the Indian fine-dining hole this fall, the square will have traded one long-running sushi house for two new reasons to stay out. Hours and menus for Ignite are at www.eatatignite.com. The grand opening is October 2.

Source: SVBJ 

San Jose Reports a Sharp Drop in Homelessness

City Hall released a new estimate this week that the unsheltered population fell about 32 percent in 18 months, from 5,477 people in February 2025 to 3,702 in August 2026. Mayor Matt Mahan tied the change to encampment cleanups, no-re-encampment zones, and a fast buildout of interim rooms: motels, tiny homes, and other emergency beds. ABC7 heard from some residents near Arena Green and the SAP Center who said they now see fewer people living outdoors, even as they added that the crisis has not left the city.

The numbers come from UrbanLogiq, a third-party model that folds in 15 data streams rather than waiting for the federal Point-in-Time count every two years. Those streams include outreach logs, police and fire calls, transportation counts of lived-in vehicles, and Homeless Management Information System records. Officials say the same model counted about 1,500 more unsheltered people than the January 2025 PIT figure of 3,959, which is why they treat the older snapshot as an undercount. The plan is to refresh the estimate every quarter so programs can shift instead of guessing for two years at a stretch.

Housing staff also pointed to capacity that did not exist a short while ago. Reports this week put newly created interim units around 1,000, while a September 15 council briefing described a wider portfolio of roughly 1,820 units and more than 2,200 beds across 22 sites. Lived-in vehicles tracked by the city fell from 960 in fall 2024 to 385 by spring 2026. Resident surveys moved in the same direction: the share of people who named homelessness as the single biggest thing San Jose should change dropped from a peak of 40 percent to 20 percent.

Skeptics asked whether the street feels that different. Advocate Shaunn Cartwright told ABC7 the 32 percent cut does not match what she sees day to day and noted that unhoused deaths last year hit 160, with 2026 on a similar pace. The Mercury News reported that Santa Clara County has not independently reviewed the UrbanLogiq model. The next official PIT count is not due until early 2027, so federal funders may still lean on the older method. City leaders themselves said the people still outside are often the hardest to reach, with addiction and mental health needs that interim beds alone will not settle.

A smaller outdoor population would matter for parks, storefronts, and the everyday walk through Downtown San Jose. It would also matter for the thousands who moved inside if those rooms stay funded and lead somewhere more permanent. The next quarterly run of the model will show whether the line keeps falling or levels off.

Source: ABC News