San Jose Flea Market
I haven’t been to the San Jose Flea Market since I was in the single digit age group… let me put it this way, that ended in 1980. It was nice seeing that things really haven’t changed after all the years that had passed. It was good timing going there with my wife and kids, and my father-in-law given just a few days ago I had read that the Flea Market may be closing down in favor of more homes.
All I can say is that closing places like this down in favor of more housing really kills any sense of what San Jose once was. At one point, San Jose was the city that struggled with being second best to San Francisco, and even third best to Oakland. San Jose appears to be an A-list city these days. Being a long time San Josean, I still do double takes when I hear the city mentioned in television shows.
San Jose has found some kind of personality, but what made the city what it has become today is being destroyed in the name of housing, well lined pockets and retail — a good cause, but when most people in the valley can’t afford to buy a home, and with the funny math that’s caused hundreds of people to lose their homes, who really benefits?
The San Jose Flea Market is really an institution… it’s one of the few non-big-business/box store/chain malls/condos/homes-with-almost-no-yards, etc that still exists in the valley. It’s a community of it’s own with a flavor that really can’t be matched by the various other Flea Markets and the bland Farmers’ Markets appearing everywhere. Yes, there are other Flea Markets, but how many of them can lay claim to being the “World’s Biggest”? I can’t think of too many of these pieces of Americana that can be seen as unique destinations in of themselves, save the 630 miles, across 5 states of yard sales along Hwy 127 (now that’s big).
To be fair, the owners claim that they are looking to relocate the Flea Market’s location, but unless the intent is real and it really happens (I wonder how given how expensive property/leases are), we’ll be losing yet another piece of San Jose (think Frontier Village). All I can say is thank goodness for people like Emma Prusch who saw the importance to public accessibility of the legacy that San Jose has…. had she not left the land to the city without the condition of keeping it “rural”… it might be a bunch of overpriced town homes, or maybe collection of box stores like WalMart, Target, Home Depot or Best Buy…. I like these places, but I don’t think we necessarily need more of them.
My understanding is that an agreement had been made with the city on the use of this property, and that the recent discussion was an addendum… but is this the same City Council and Mayor that yanked power from now Vice Mayor Dave Cortese and the Evergreen/East Hills Task Force?
This begs me to ask the question, who wins and who gains…. I certainly don’t think it’s us.
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Agree with you completely, Victor…