Wednesday Wishlist: Halloween in the Park! (Part IX)

UPDATED: Added a couple new ideas that were submitted this month

In what has become a San Jose Blog October tradition, today we have a Wednesday Wishlist post for Halloween in the Park. The idea is to build on the momentum that Christmas in the Park brings to San Jose each year and create something of similar scale for the month of October with Halloween in the Park! A lot of the infrastructure such as wiring, lighting, and booths might even be able to be shared between the events. The goal would be to make Downtown San Jose the epicenter of October Halloween experiences.

Below you will find brainstorming ideas we have collected for this concept so far over the years. Please have a look and provide your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks!

---

The largest draw to Downtown San Jose for many years now has been Christmas in the Park. It has continued to grow year after year and brings in visitors from all over the Bay Area. It's economic impact is substantial and helps keep many Downtown businesses and restaurants alive.

What would you think about a similar event for Halloween? Picture Downtown lit up in orange and purple with elaborate Halloween displays assembled by local artists. Perhaps infrastructure could even be shared with Christmas in the Park (e.g. retail booths). A strong event in October would help maintain traffic between the summer months and Christmas in the Park. Here are the ideas we have so far:

• Animated Halloween Displays
• Created by local artists
• Analogous to the Christmas displays that attract many families during Christmas in the Park (almost half a million visitors)
• Family friendly so that everyone can enjoy it (PG/PG13, perhaps around the same level as Great America Halloween Haunt)
• Halloween Lighting
• Orange, purple, and green LED lighting on trees
• May be possible to use new programmable LED lighting that can go from Halloween colors to Christmas colors with the push of a button, allowing the lights to stay up for Christmas in the Park as well and reducing setup/take-down costs.
• Halloween Food
• Booths with candied apples, chocolates, candy, pumpkin seeds, etc.
• Food trucks
• Trick-or-treating station - a free piece of candy to anyone wearing a costume any day in October (could also be used to hand out promotional flyers for Downtown events/businesses/resources)
• Retail Booths selling Halloween items, for example:
• Artwork (paintings, glass pumpkins, etc.)
• Home decor/crafts like candles
• Light-up hats/necklaces/bracelets
• Costumes
• Zombie/Halloween make-up station 
• Halloween-themed Carnival Games
• Pirates of Emerson and Candlelighters (Fremont) do a good job of providing family-friendly games themed around Halloween
• A handful of children's rides could also be added to the Paseo and reused for Christmas in the Park
• Interactive Art
• ZERO1-style, but with a Halloween spin.
• Halloween-themed video game kiosks and/or arcades
• Pumpkins
• Instead of the sponsored Christmas trees in Christmas in the Park, how about decorated Pumpkins (can even be Styrofoam so there is no mess/decay)?
• Pumpkin carving station for families. 
• Pumpkin carving contest.
• Costumed Entertainers
• Walking around the area, not necessarily scaring people but adding to the ambiance and providing photo opportunities for families
• Haunts / Mazes
• Would be ideal if these were nearby, perhaps in vacant retails spaces, surface parking lots, the San Jose Convention Center tent, or at SJSU.
• Could partners with one of the established San Jose haunt providers such as Deadtime Dreams or The World's Largest Haunted House.
• Potential Events
• Zombie-O-Rama can be used to kick off Halloween in the Park (late Sep. / early Oct. time-frame)
• Zombie Crawl
• Dia De Los Muertos Events
• Halloween/Dia De Los Muertos Bike Party
• Horror Movie Trivia Contest
• Weekly horror movie screening (perhaps in the Circle of Palms area?)
• Costume Ball

Inspirations:

• Candle Lighters
• Pirates of Emerson
• The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze (photos below)

Wednesday Wishlist: Halloween in the Park! (Part VIII)

In what has become a San Jose Blog October tradition, today we have a Wednesday Wishlist post for Halloween in the Park. The idea is to build on the momentum that Christmas in the Park brings to San Jose each year and create something of similar scale for the month of October with Halloween in the Park! A lot of the infrastructure such as wiring, lighting, and booths might even be able to be shared between the events. The goal would be to make Downtown San Jose the epicenter of October Halloween experiences.

Below you will find brainstorming ideas we have collected for this concept so far over the years. Please have a look and provide your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks!

---

The largest draw to Downtown San Jose for many years now has been Christmas in the Park. It has continued to grow year after year and brings in visitors from all over the Bay Area. It's economic impact is substantial and helps keep many Downtown businesses and restaurants alive.

What would you think about a similar event for Halloween? Picture Downtown lit up in orange and purple with elaborate Halloween displays assembled by local artists. Perhaps infrastructure could even be shared with Christmas in the Park (e.g. retail booths). A strong event in October would help maintain traffic between the summer months and Christmas in the Park. Here are the ideas we have so far:

• Animated Halloween Displays
• Created by local artists
• Analogous to the Christmas displays that attract many families during Christmas in the Park (almost half a million visitors)
• Family friendly so that everyone can enjoy it (PG/PG13, perhaps around the same level as Great America Halloween Haunt)
• Halloween Lighting
• Orange, purple, and green LED lighting on trees
• May be possible to use new programmable LED lighting that can go from Halloween colors to Christmas colors with the push of a button, allowing the lights to stay up for Christmas in the Park as well and reducing setup/take-down costs.
• Halloween Food
• Booths with candied apples, chocolates, candy, pumpkin seeds, etc.
• Food trucks
• Trick-or-treating station - a free piece of candy to anyone wearing a costume any day in October (could also be used to hand out promotional flyers for Downtown events/businesses/resources)
• Retail Booths selling Halloween items, for example:
• Artwork (paintings, glass pumpkins, etc.)
• Home decor/crafts like candles
• Light-up hats/necklaces/bracelets
• Costumes
• Zombie/Halloween make-up station 
• Halloween-themed Carnival Games
• Pirates of Emerson and Candlelighters (Fremont) do a good job of providing family-friendly games themed around Halloween
• A handful of children's rides could also be added to the Paseo and reused for Christmas in the Park
• Interactive Art
• ZERO1-style, but with a Halloween spin.
• Pumpkins
• Instead of the sponsored Christmas trees in Christmas in the Park, how about decorated Pumpkins (can even be Styrofoam so there is no mess/decay)?
• Pumpkin carving station for families. 
• Pumpkin carving contest.
• Costumed Entertainers
• Walking around the area, not necessarily scaring people but adding to the ambiance and providing photo opportunities for families
• Haunts / Mazes
• Would be ideal if these were nearby, perhaps in vacant retails spaces, surface parking lots, the San Jose Convention Center tent, or at SJSU.
• Could partners with one of the established San Jose haunt providers such as Deadtime Dreams or The World's Largest Haunted House.
• Potential Events
• Zombie-O-Rama can be used to kick off Halloween in the Park (late Sep. / early Oct. time-frame)
• Zombie Crawl
• Dia De Los Muertes Bike Party
• Horror Movie Trivia Contest
• Weekly horror movie screening (perhaps in the Circle of Palms area?)
• Costume Ball

As in previous years, please post your suggestions below and I'll merge them in!

Wednesday Wishlist: More Public Art

A few weeks ago I was in Vancouver and was surprised at the amount of public art around the city. Below is one example that I really loved. This piece turns a bland, windowless side of a building into an attraction that tells a story about the the building itself. There are so many walls throughout San Jose that could use something like this.

I love all the murals going up in San Jose right now, especially Japantown. Let's take it to the next level and aim for something at the scale shown below!

P.S. Notice the green rooftop. Despite having much worse weather than San Jose, almost every high-rise had trees, shrubs, and patios on the roof.

How Downtown San Jose's Streetscapes Can Benefit From Ideas Used in Montreal and Quebec City

Mark from Think Bigger San Jose has just returned from a ten day trip to Montreal and Quebec. He has brought home some souvenirs in the form of ideas to make San Jose a stronger city. His recap of the trip includes tons of great photos as well as five main streetscape take-a-ways. Check out Mark's excellent post over here!

Wednesday Wishlist: Museum of the Future

I recently stumbled across this video showing a new Dubai museum dedicated to future technology. The entire building itself is going to be printed using a giant 20-foot tall 3D printer. Even the furniture inside will be 3D printed. If the Tech Museum ever expands in the future, there may be some interesting concepts from this project that can be incorporated (like the laser projection at the very end of the video).

Wednesday Wishlist: UC San Jose

Madison Nguyen--former San Jose District 7 Councilwoman--wrote a great article suggesting that the next UC campus should be in San Jose... and I couldn't agree more.

San Jose has more STEM jobs per capita than any other major city in the US (by far). There are so many in fact, that we rely heavily on importing talent from all around the world to fill them. Even then there are over 50,000 job openings today in Santa Clara County. The demand has never been greater for another world-class University in Silicon Valley to help increase our talent pool for highly skilled workers.

Madison Nguyen mentions new legislation to scout for a future campus that would have a specific focus on "STEAM" education: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. She states that it is envisioned as a public CalTech at a far more affordable price. Hello, could there be any better location than San Jose for this?

I'll even add one more interesting suggestion that would sweeten the ROI for a UC San Jose, and that would be sharing resources with SJSU. Universities are expensive to build and maintain, so what if certain resources such as the MLK Library and Spartan Stadium could be shared between two world-class educational institutions and have operating costs split between them. Perhaps even some classes could be cross-listed, giving students at both Universities a greater range of educational options and electives. If there is one thing Silicon Valley is great at besides innovation, it's collaboration.

Read Madison Nguyen's opinion piece on UC San Jose over here. 

Think Bigger San Jose: Convert Rooftops Downtown Into Terraces

As usual, Mark has some bright ideas on improving Downtown San Jose. His latest blog post proposes converting Downtown rooftops to terraces or gardens. This is an idea I completely agree with and it only takes one visit up to the Capital Club or Scott's Seafood to see the potential "sky terraces" can have Downtown. This is a great way of taking underutilized spaces and turning them into assets that residents can use 300+ days a year.

Read the blog post over here!

Wednesday Wishlist: Google's New Office Concept in San Jose

Not content with just transforming advertising, mobile computing, and cars, Google has set its sights on completely changing the environment in which people work. The 10 minute video below is a bit lengthy for my attention span, but completely worth watching.

Google is proposing a massive renovation of its suburban and generic Mountain View offices that would turn them into one of the most innovative office campuses in the world. Instead of creating fixed structures, the spaces would be very easy to reconfigure (like Lincoln Logs)... making them able to accommodate future office innovations decades from now. The offices space is then draped in a transparent solar-power absorbing canopy that makes you feel like you are outside. Bike and pedestrian paths are completely inter-weaved with the buildings as you can see from the photos below, and unlike Apple will be accessible to the public.

Given the tens of millions of suburban-style office space we have in San Jose, I'm hoping that local companies will find some inspiration and really think about how to design future office buildings that are not just generic boxes. Samsung is doing a great job with their new building, but Google just took it to a whole new level.

Source: SVBJ

Think Bigger San Jose: "Retail... in Downtown San Jose?"

Think Bigger San Jose has a great post about creating a continuous retail district in central Downtown San Jose. Commercial vacancy is below 10% and several high-density housing projects are about to come online... is now the time to turn Downtown into a retail destination? Mark proposes creating a retail paseo in the area outlined below where parking spaces could be turned into unique retail parklets, perhaps using shipping containers. It's a must-read for visitors of this blog, so please check out the post over here.

On a slightly related note, we may soon have drawings for a temporary retail project consisting of multiple shipping containers that is being proposed for Downtown.

Wednesday Wishlist: Interactive Pedestrian Games

Some innovative Germans have come up with a pretty creative way to entertain pedestrians that are waiting at a crosswalk. Instead of just hitting a button and waiting for the walk sign, you can play a game of Pong with someone across the street. It's a slick idea that is being used in at least two different intersections in Germany and I think it would fit well in Silicon Valley's culture.

I think the urbanists that read this blog would agree that ideally there would be no crosswalk buttons and all the streetlights would be optimized for pedestrians. However, there are several intersections where that just won't work such as Market and San Carlos... which also happens to be in front of the Marriott, St. Claire, Plaza de Cesar Chavez, and a stones-throw away from the Convention Center. With so many visitors coming to this intersection, what better place to show a little digital creativity in our public infrastructure?

Source: Autoblog


STREETPONG from HAWK Hildesheim on Vimeo.

Wednesday Wishlist: 2024 Bay Area Olympics

San Francisco has officially put in a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics  at an estimated budget of $4.5 billion. However, given SF does not have the resources or space to host this alone, the plan includes utilizing facilities all around the Bay Area including Levi's Stadium and Avaya Stadium (the new Earthquakes Stadium). So in a nutshell, SF would take on all of the risk and financial costs while San Jose would benefit from locally hosted events, economic impacts, and having easy access to all Summer Olympic games. It sounds like a win to me, similar to having Levi's stadium in Santa Clara.

What would you guys think about a 2024 Bay Area Olympics?

Source: SVBJ

Wednesday Wishlist: Michelin Star Restaurants (2015 Edition)

Just in time for Thanksgiving, I'm going my 6th annual rant on needing to get some internationally recognized Michelin-starred restaurants in San Jose! The Michelin guide is the most renowned rubric for measuring culinary greatness, and for the most part San Jose restaurants have been excluded from its pages. However, I think the foodie culture is continuing to build momentum in San Jose, especially Downtown. I'm continuing to be optimistic for the future!

Michelin has three different star categories:

• One Star - A very good restaurant in its category with cuisine prepared to a consistently high standard. A good place to stop on your journey.
• Two Stars - Excellent cuisine, skillfully and carefully crafted dishes of outstanding quality. Worth a detour.
• Three Stars - Exceptional cuisine with distinctive dishes and superlative ingredients. Worth a special journey.

I created a Google doc listing all of the star recipients for 2015, along with tabs for all previous years and some general statistics. Below is an image capture from the doc. This year there were a total of 40 restaurants on the list, which is up 2 from last year and down from the peak of 47 in 2012. 53% of the restaurants are locating in SF, 25% in Wine Country, 20% in Silicon Valley (split evenly between the South Bay and the Peninsula), and 3% in the East Bay. There are two new restaurant on the list this year, Kusakabe and Maruya (both Japanese) as well as three upgrades: Saison and Benu now have the elusive 3-star rating and Acquerello was upgraded to 2 stars. No restaurants from 2014 were dropped.

I will also mention that there are some restaurants in the Michelin guide that do not get a star, but are considered "Michelin Recommended." Within this category San Jose scored a total of 10 restaurants:

• Downtown
• Vung Tau
• Back A Yard
• The Alameda
• Zona Rosa (NEW)
• North San Jose
• Smoking Pig BBQ
• South San Jose
• Bun Bo Hue An Nam
• Thien Long
• Willow Glen
• The Table (NEW)
• Fratello
• Camden
• Rangoli
• Zeni

Zona Rosa and The Table are two well-deserved additions. Unfortunately, there were some restaurants from 2014 that did not make the cut this year: SJ Omogari in Japantown, La Costa in East San Jose, LB Steak in Santana Row, and Pizza Antica which is also in Santana Row. If we don't get some stars, at the very least we'll hopefully get more Michelin Recommended or Bib Gourmand restaurant ratings in 2016. If you haven't been to the restaurants above, I can vouch that all 9 are well worth checking out.

Source: Michelin Guide

Wednesday Wishlist: Halloween in the Park! (Part VII)

In honor of Halloween week, I have what is becoming a San Jose Blog tradition... a Wednesday Wishlist post for Halloween in the Park. The idea is to build on the momentum that Christmas in the Park brings to San Jose each year and create something of similar scale in October with Halloween in the Park! A lot of the infrastructure such as wiring, lighting, and booths might even be able to be shared between the events. The goal would be to make Downtown San Jose the epicenter of October Halloween experiences.

Below you will find brainstorming ideas we have collected for this concept so far. Please have a look and provide your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks!

---

The largest draw to Downtown San Jose for many years now has been Christmas in the Park. It has continued to grow year after year and brings in visitors from all over the Bay Area. It's economic impact is substantial and helps keep many Downtown businesses afloat.

What would you think about a similar event for Halloween? Picture Downtown lit up in orange and purple with elaborate Halloween displays assembled by local artists. Perhaps infrastructure could even be shared with Christmas in the Park (e.g. retail booths). A strong event in October would help maintain traffic between the summer months and Christmas in the Park. Here are the ideas we have so far:

• Animated Halloween Displays
• Created by local artists
• Analogous to the Christmas displays that attract many families during Christmas in the Park (almost half a million visitors)
• Family friendly so that everyone can enjoy it (PG/PG13, perhaps around the same level as Great America Halloween Haunt)
• Halloween Lighting
• Orange, purple, and green LED lighting on trees
• May be possible to use new controllable lighting that can go from Halloween colors to Christmas colors with the push of a button, allowing the lights to stay up for Christmas in the Park as well and reducing setup/take-down effort.
• Halloween Food
• Booths with candied apples, chocolates, candy, pumpkin seeds, etc.
• Food trucks
• Trick-or-treating station - a free piece of candy to anyone wearing a costume any day in October (could also be used to hand out promotional flyers for Downtown events/businesses/resources)
• Retail Booths selling Halloween items, for example:
• Artwork (paintings, glass pumpkins, etc.)
• Home decor/crafts like candles
• Light-up hats/necklaces/bracelets
• Costumes
• Zombie/Halloween make-up station 
• Halloween-themed Carnival Games
• Pirates of Emerson and Candlelighters (Fremont) do a good job of providing family-friendly games themed around Halloween
• A handful of children's rides could also be added to the Paseo and reused for Christmas in the Park
• Interactive Art
• ZERO1-style, but with a Halloween spin.
• Pumpkins
• Instead of the sponsored Christmas trees in Christmas in the Park, how about decorated Pumpkins (can even be Styrofoam so there is no mess/decay)?
• Pumpkin carving station for families. 
• Pumpkin carving contest.
• Costumed Entertainers
• Walking around the area, not necessarily scaring people but adding to the ambiance and providing photo opportunities for families
• Haunts / Mazes
• Would be ideal if these were nearby, perhaps in vacant retails spaces, surface parking lots, the convention center, or at SJSU.
• Could partners with one of the established San Jose haunt providers such as Deadtime Dreams or The World's Largest Haunted House.
• Potential Events
• Zombie-O-Rama can be used to kick off Halloween in the Park (late Sep. / early Oct. time-frame)
• Zombie Crawl
• Dia De Los Muertes Bike Party
• Horror Movie Trivia Contest
• Weekly horror movie screening (perhaps in the Circle of Palms area?)
• Costume Ball

As in previous years, please post your suggestions below and I'll merge them in!

Wednesday Wishlist: Mass Transit Upgrades From London

While it was just recently that I posted about the planned upgrades to BART that will come just in time for BART's expansion to San Jose, there are already some other great ideas out there that would be nice to have in our mass transit system. London is going to start getting next generation trains for several of its lines in 2022, and there are three great ideas that I would love to see incorporated into BART.

1.) Autonomous Trains - Improved safety, reliability, and a permanent end to BART strikes.
2.) Continuous Trains - Instead of having a series of connected cars, the new tube trains will be one single super-long cabin that can bend. This substantially increases capacity and access.
3.) Safety Doors - There will be no chance of falling onto the tracks since there will be a second set of door that are synced with the trains and only open when there is a train parked at the station.

See the video below for a sneak peak at what is coming next decade to London. Note several elements of the new London trains are incorporated into the new BART trains like more doors and digital signage.

Wednesday Wishlist: Better Signage in San Jose

There are many great attractions and restaurants in San Jose that people have no clue exist. This could easily be solved with improved signage in the Downtown core and other parts of San Jose such as Japantown.

SPUR recently took a field trip to London and found some of the best signage around. Each post had a full directory of major attractions and what you can find within a 5 minute walk and a 15 minute walk. The signs are also consistent, so once you get used to one you can easily use any of them.

Not only should we consider something like this for San Jose, but I think we should take it a step further and put a Silicon Valley spin on it. We should make interactive digital signs. Not only would they stand out even more and look cool, but they could easily be modified when new restaurants and attractions come in. A portion of the sign could even be used to promote events similar to the signpost banners that are being used today.

Imagine all the creative things you could do with an interactive digital sign. With a cheap camera you could look into another location such as another part of San Jose or even a sister city. You can turn the signs into a game (explore Downtown and find them all, be submitted for a drawing of some kind). They could be used to display local art. The possibilities are endless.

Source: SPUR

Wednesday Wishlist: Clever Street Art

My wife Sarah came across the following photos of really clever street art. These bring in natural elements of the surrounding area into the art itself. I think we could easily use some of these ideas in San Jose. Not only do they look super cool, but they encourage people walking by to snap photos and share with friends. There are more images at the source link below.

Source: The Meta Picture

Wednesday Wishlist: SkyTran Hover-Monorail PRT

High-speed Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is getting closer to reality. SkyTran is company operating out of the NASA campus in Mountain View that is building the future of transportation. Each autonomous pod accommodates up to two people and hangs on an inverted monorail using magnetic levitation (maglev). The first test loop will be built at the Aerospace Industry Campus in Lod, Israel and will initially operate oaf 45 MPH. Future systems could hit well over 100 MPH.

The first commercial system will be built in Tel Aviv for only $80 million. Imagine what a system like this could do for San Jose.

Source: Engadget

skyTran Animated Infographic from The Collaborative on Vimeo.

Wednesday Wishlist: Cool Steps

The San Jose art scene is really moving in the right direction, especially Downtown with various projects to turn boring objects into works of art. Examples include Downtown Doors, the wrapped utility boxes, yarn bombing, painted benches, and several that are in the works such as the "art crosswalks" and LED lit underpasses. Japantown is also doing a great job with their murals. However, there is always more that we can do.

I ran across a site with amazing painted staircases from all over the world. There are quite a few areas where we could do something like this. Immediately the steps leading up to the San Jose Museum of Art and "The Stairs" at Communication Hill come to mind. Where else could we add art to stairs in San Jose like the photos below?

While we are on the topic of new canvases for art, I would like to bring up an old post about simple, "interactive" art that I ran across in Israel. Here is the link.

Source: Bored Panda

Wednesday Wishlist: More Innovation with High-Rise Designs

I recently ran across the below renders for the Hualien Wellness & Residential development over in Taiwan. Several aspects of this project stood out to me. The most obvious is the stunning and unique design which also happens to be eco-friendly. What may be less obvious is that these are actually homes for seniors and the project is no taller than 18-stories.

There is absolutely no reason why we couldn't have buildings like this in San Jose, especially since they are well within our height limit. Not only are we the Capital of Silicon Valley, but we are at the center of the Green-tech industry. We should have buildings like this that could demonstrate innovation in the housing sector in addition to traditional green industries like solar energy.

I would even go so far as to call the designs below "suburban-friendly." I could see these types of buildings replacing strip malls near transit for traditionally suburban areas without causing much of a visual disturbance to nearby neighbors. Of course, I would love to see some of these Downtown... but at some point we will have to start thinking about urbanizing other parts of San Jose while minimizing impact to surrounding areas.

Source: Inhabitat

Wednesday Wishlist: Vertical Gardens

As a green-tech leader, San Jose needs to up its game when it comes to building designs. Below are photos of Clearpoint Tower in Sri Lanka, which will be the world's tallest vertical garden. It has 164 apartments across 46 floors and every units is wrapped in plants which buffer sound, heat, and help clean the air. The garden is watered using an automatic drip irrigation system and other green elements such as solar panels and natural ventilation are also incorporated into the design.

A project like this would be ideal in areas that have few tall buildings in the immediate area... such as the suburbs. It would blend into areas not used to density much nicer than a steel or glass tower. I could see projects like this replacing strip malls near public transit in East/South San Jose.

Source: Inhabitat