“If there was more I could give there would be no need for this post,” proprietor Andrew Saman mentioned in an Instagram submit. “However, we must face the reality that some things are just out of our control.”
When Saman took over what had been Cafe Stritch in June 2022, he had plans to create a music-driven venue that may additionally change into a eating vacation spot for downtown.
Andrew Saman, co-owner of Mama Kin, on the restaurant and music venue’s first day of operation in downtown San Jose on Friday, June 6, 2022. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Space Information Group)
Through the years, the tunes reverberating in opposition to the brick partitions hit extra genres than you’d assume: soul and salsa, R&B and straight-up jazz. There have been fashionable nation music nights on Thursdays, and the viewers bought its likelihood on the mic on karaoke Wednesdays. The menu leaned on Southern faves like a gooey mac and cheese and shrimp and grits to go along with your commonplace burgers and wings.
It’s a sobering reminder that regardless of downtown San Jose’s much-ballyhooed nighttime rebound, preserving a bar, restaurant and music venue alive isn’t any certain factor. And dropping a spot the place folks can hear or carry out reside music is a physique blow to the vibrancy everybody appears to need downtown. In his very philosophical submit, Saman mentioned he hopes the area on South First Avenue — which has a lineage going again to 1977 as Eulipia restaurant — isn’t quiet lengthy.
“Hopefully there’s a brave soul willing to continue the fight to keep the Arts alive in this iconic building,” he wrote. “Arts are the true language of an authentic humanity. To the warriors of heart the world needs you now more than ever.”
POETIC MOONSHOOT: If all goes nicely, former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Sally Ashton will have the ability to say her poetry is absolutely out of this world. Considered one of her poems was chosen to be a part of the Lunar Codex, a mission to ship cultural artifacts from all around the globe to the moon.
Her contribution shall be a part of a payload aboard three 2025 flights — with the primary scheduled to launch Tuesday night time from NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart in Florida — that can spend three days touring to the moon, then make orbits over a number of days earlier than making an attempt a smooth lunar touchdown. Her poem is etched on a nickel-plated nanofiche together with 1000’s of different works from artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians which can be a part of the mission.
The Lunar Codex was created by Samuel Peralta, a physicist and creator, who got here up with the thought of sharing our collective creativity with the heavens through the darkish days of the pandemic lockdowns. There are seven time capsules with the work of greater than 40,000 people representing 259 nations around the globe, and three have already got been launched.
Ashton, whose poem was chosen through an internet contest in 2022, was pinching herself after registering as a digital visitor with NASA to observe the launch and has her fingers crossed for a profitable mission. “How crazy is that?” she mentioned.
HELP WANTED: Santa Clara County’s point-in-time rely of unhoused residents is scheduled to occur subsequent week — on Wednesday, Jan. 22 and Thursday, Jan. 23 — and county officers are in search of volunteers to assist with the trouble.
The PIT Rely — also referred to as the Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey — is absolutely essential as a result of one of many first steps in serving to people who find themselves residing unsheltered on our streets is to know simply what number of of these folks there are. And because it’s broadly believed that these counts are all the time on the low aspect, extra volunteers ought to translate to extra folks being counted precisely.
Initially Printed: January 14, 2025 at 12:20 PM PST
