Saturday Stats: San Jose is one of the best places to live

In a U.S. News report, the largest 100 metros were analyzed to determine the best place to live in the country. The key criteria were desirability, value, job market, quality of life, and net migration. San Jose took 3rd place, behind Austin (#1) and Denver (#2). SF came in at #16.

Sources: SVBJ, U.S. News

The 30th Annual ComedySportz World Championship comes to Downtown San Jose

ComedySportz is a really fun concept where improv comics compete against one another. There is a large amount of audience participation and the competitions vary greatly, so each show is completely different. The San Jose ComedySportz troop runs their shows out of the Camera 3 theater, but there are actually 25 different ComedySportz locations throughout the world. 

Next week the ComedySportz World Championship is taking place in San Jose at the Hammer Theatre (now run by SJSU). This is the second time we will be hosting the World Championship, and San Jose won the first time we hosted it in 2006. You can find everything you need to know about the epic four-day event in the press release below. 

THE WORLD OF COMEDY COMES TO SAN JOSE

WHO: 30th Annual ComedySportz World Championship

WHAT: 22 ComedySportz teams from the United States and England will come together to battle for laughs. (See list of participating cities below)

WHEN: 

Wednesday, June 28  7:30pm Opening Ceremonies and First Match.  

Thursday, June 29  Championship Matches at 7:30pm

Friday, June 30  Championship Matches at 7:00pm and 9:30pm

Saturday, July 1  Semi-Final Matches at 4:00pm and 7:00pm.   FINAL CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH at 9:30pm followed by Awards Ceremony with presentation of the "Meaningless Cup” and Closing Party.

WHERE:  Hammer Theatre Center, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose, CA 95113 

WHY: This 30th annual event is fun, fast-paced, family-friendly improvisational comedy played as a sport. Two teams take turns making up scenes, playing games and singing songs – and the audience votes on which team they like best. This is serious funny business.   This is only the second time in the 30 years of the event that the Bay Area will host the games.  Sponsored by San Jose State University.

PRICES: Single Tickets $10 to $20.  All-Access Pass available for $75. (All four days; all events)

TICKETS: 408.924.8501 or https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/971732

Hammer Theatre Center Box Office is open weekdays 12-5pm and 2 hours prior to performance for both phone and walk-up sales. Located on Paseo de San Antonio between Second and Third Streets.

CITIES PARTICIPATING: Boise, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Manchester (England), Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Portland, Provo, Quad Cities, Richmond, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Jose, Seattle, Twin Cities and Washington DC.

SHORT BYTE FOR CALENDARS: The 30th annual ComedySportz World Championship will be held June 28 through July 1 in the beautiful Hammer Theatre Center, 101 Paseo de San Antonio in the heart of downtown San Jose. Nearly two dozen teams from around the United States (and one from England) will compete over the four day event for pride and prizes with improvisational comedy, games and songs based on suggestions from the audience. Tickets are $10 to $20 at 408.924.8501 or online at https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/971732

PHOTOS: Photos by PJ Heller courtesy of ComedySportz San Jose.  Comedy as a sport! Two teams battle each other in an improvised comedy competition based entirely on audience suggestions. A referee calls penalties for boring or crude humor. If a player (or fan) uses “foul language" the referee can call the “Brown Bag Foul" and place a paper bag over the offenders head.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Representative teams from 22 improvisational comedy groups from across the United States and England will descend on San Jose June 28 through July 1 for the 2017 ComedySportz World Championship.

ComedySportz isn’t a comedy about sports, it’s comedy played AS a sport. It’s a competition between two teams competing for laughs and for points by making up scenes based on the audience suggestions. There are penalties, there are fouls, there’s a uniformed referee. This is serious funny business.

The four-day event, featuring workshops, public performances and impromptu improvisation sessions stretching into the early morning hours, kicks off on Wednesday June 28th at 7:30pm. San Jose’s own venerable ComedySportz team, founded in 1987, will participate in the opening match. On Saturday, July 1st, after that evening’s 9:30pm championship match, one team will emerge victorious and be awarded the "Meaningless Cup."

The ComedySportz concept, created by Dick Chudnow in Milwaukee in 1984, was inspired by the Canadian-born Theatersports enterprise. Chudnow gave it a sports-themed look and feel, incorporating uniformed referees and devising time limits and a point system that seemed to place the event somewhere between the NFL and "Who’s Line is it Anyway." Chudnow has described the ComedySportz ethos as family friendly, relatively foolproof and pretty much guaranteed to be goofy.

ABOUT US: CSz San Jose, the producer of ComedySportz was founded in 1987 and is licensed by CSz Worldwide, one of 25 teams in cities across the United States and two in Europe (Manchester England and Berlin Germany.) In addition to a year-round schedule of matches at their Arena in San Jose, they participate in programs and road shows for corporate, college, church, school and association clients each year, coach high school leagues, and lead corporate team-building and Applied Improv workshops. 2017 will be the second time that ComedySportz San Jose has hosted the World Championships and they won the title in 2006.

San Jose Crime

Earlier this year San Francisco kicked off a major benchmarking study against 16 peer cities. The data in the report is completely unbiased in relation to San Jose--our city had no part in the funding or creation of the report.

A striking chart that I came across shows both violent and property crimes in the benchmark cities. The ideal quadrant to be in for this chart is the lower left, meaning cities that have both low violent crime and property crime. The red arrow shows where 0 crime would be. Despite all of the noise regarding increases in San Jose crime over the past few years, not only were we in the best quadrant but we had the lowest per capita violent crime of any city except for San Diego. As for property crimes, we also beat out all but four cities (in a good way).

San Francisco has nearly double the violent crime and property crime in San Jose proper. Oakland takes it to the next level with quadruple the violent crime. So if anyone ever tells you that San Jose is not safe, you can send them the chart below.

Source: SocketSite

VTA's BART Phase II Update

Below is a webinar with the latest updates on the $4.69 billion BART Phase II project. This will be the most expensive transit project in Silicon Valley history and add a subway through Downtown San Jose with three stations along with a new terminus station in Santa Clara.

The video is 40 minutes long, but well worth watching if you are interested in transportation projects. One question that came up multiple times is why the heck we are building a completely redundant station in Santa Clara that is already serviced by Caltrain instead of evaluating running BART to San Jose International or Santana Row. Unfortunately, the response was very mediocre--it takes a long time to plan these projects and voters already voted for this specific alignment. I have to say that is a disappointing answer and is completely misaligned with the pace of change in Silicon Valley. It will be 9 years (at least) until this project is completed, so we should make sure we build that most effective system that will maximize utilization instead of making multi-billion dollar errors because we did the easy thing instead of the right thing.

BART itself is built on 45 year old technology. I have been a huge advocate and supporter, but honestly am starting to have doubts that BART will be the most effective transportation solution in 2026. Self-driving cars will completely change the transportation landscape within a decade, and costs will come dangerously close to public transit for point-to-point transportation in a private cabin. I hope that VTA is agile enough to keep up with transit innovations and make sure we are building these epic projects for the future and not for the past.

Video Link

Content Magazine 9.3 "Future" Pick-Up Party

The latest edition of Content is available today. and the theme is inventors and makers. The new issue kicks off with a party tonight with food, arts, and music provided by those featured in issue 9.3. The pick-up party will be at Local Color (27 South First St.) and run from 7pm-9:30pm.

This latest issue features: San Jose Digital Arts, Nikalabs Digital Agency, Shmoop, Gonzalo Juarez, Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, Dirt Bag Dan,Dream Logic, Moon Express, Theresa Alvarado of SPUR San Jose, 2nd Story Bakeshop, The Catamount, Salty Sherilyn, Active Poet, and more.

To learn more, head over to the Content website.

Omescape San Jose adds a 5th escape game: Sorcerer's Sanctum!

Escape games are now all the rage in the Bay Area, but some rooms are far better than others. The concept is similar for all escape games: you are locked in and have an hour to solve a series of puzzles in order to unlock the door and escape. So far I have done all of the Omescape rooms in San Jose, and they have been by far my favorites. 

Omescape uses a lot of special effects, tactile challenges (as opposed to solving lots of math problems), and utilizes multiple rooms/secret doors for each escape. Some challenges can feature as many as 6 rooms to explore.

Omescape San Jose has recently added a 5th room called Sorcerer's Sanctum, and that officially makes it the largest venue for escape games games in California. There are very few locations in the world with more than 3 rooms. Omescape kindly invited the San Jose Blog team to come to Central San Jose and try out the new room.

Sorcerer's Sanctum has a brilliant set design that sets a new benchmark for these types of game. We were not allowed to take photos in the room, but have provided a few stock photographs below. The theme is magic--there were magical wands, potions, hidden doors, and so many other surprises that you might expect from a Sorcerer's laboratory. Some of the clues and pieces had RFID chips in them so that they would electronically unlock the next challenge when placed in the right spot. It was as high-tech as escape rooms get. Here is the official description:

Sorcerer's Sanctum
You and your friends have accidentally stepped into a house occupied by great magicians. Your team work will be crucial in helping you pass through a series of magical puzzles in order to escape from the spell in time!

I will say that the 4/5 difficulty rating is way off. This room only has a 2% escape rate so far, which is the lowest of any of their games. They are thinking about making some of the challenges easier or bumping up the rating to 5/5 difficulty. We did get out, but it took 72 minutes. If you go over 60, that means you do not win. The brilliant thing about the room is that we had so much fun even though we were not able to get out in time. Most of our team had never done an escape game before, but they all had a blast and are eager to do more! If you are a beginner, I recommend doing Kingdom of Cats to start.

Omescape San Jose is located at 625 Wool Creek Dr, Ste E, San Jose 95112. Check out their Facebook page over here and book tickets here.

Roots reggae band Katchafire leads off 2017 Music in the Park season in San Jose on June 28th

Blues Traveler, Brenton Wood and WAR dates also set

SAN JOSE – Music in the Park, presented by Metro kicks off its 28th season on June 23 with New Zealand-based roots-reggae rockersKatchafire.

Island reggae artists One-A-Chord from Monterey Bay, Mango Kingzfrom the Bay Area, and guest reggae DJ Robert Rankin from San Jose open the show, which starts at 5:30 p.m. at Plaza de Cesar Chavez, off Market Street in the center of downtown San Jose.

Katchafire, a five-piece all-Maori band formed in 1997, is regaled as one of the most cherished, original live reggae bands in the world.  Roots reggae artists at their core, Katchafire also integrates R&B, funk, dancehall and pop themes into their live playing.  Most recently they put out a single Burn it Down and offered Stir It Up on a recent tribute to Bob Marley, in the wake of four studio albums, multiple awards and platinum sales.www.katchafire.co.nz

Also coming to Music in the Park this summer:

• July 20:  Grammy-winners Blues Traveler, one of America’s favorite jam bands, celebrating their 30^th anniversary.www.bluestraveler.com/
• Aug. 3:  Brenton Wood brings his chest full of R&B hits up from Los Angeles to perform for his South Bay audience. twitter.com/brentonwood Wood will perform in lieu of Bootsy Collins, who was previously announced but had to cancel for medical reasons.
• Aug. 25:  WAR, self-described as “The Original Afro Cuban Jazz Rock Blues band.”  Hit parade includes “Why Can't We be Friends,’ “Low Rider,” “Cisco Kid,” “The World is a Ghetto” and more classics.  Eric Burden of the Animals co-founded the band in 1969. www.war.com

All shows include local openers.

Advanced tickets are $10 per adult and free for 12-under when accompanied by an adult.  Tickets and information are available at www.musicintheparksj.com. Day-of-the-event admission will cost $15 per adult.

Music in the Park is produced by the San Jose Downtown Association and supported by the City of San Jose.  Other major sponsors include:  Deloitte, Coors Light and Ballast Point.

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About San Jose Downtown Association:  SJDA, a non-profit membership-based organization founded in 1986, represents business and property owners and works to enhance downtown’s vitality and livability.www.sjdowntown.com

Saturday Stats: San Jose is a "millennial magnet"

Realtor.com has put together a list of the top cities in the country millennials are most interested in moving to, and San Jose just barely squeezed into the Top 10. This is based solely on the age of people researching homes in a region, but it provides some indication that we are attracting millennials despite our reputation for being geared towards families. The writeup below is quite flattering, as it should be (Realtor.com used to be located Downtown).

San Francisco only edged us out by one slot, and Salt Lake City somehow got the gold in this list.

Source: Realtor.com