Propped up at the wooden bar inside Vahl’s Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge, regulars sometimes wax poetic about Alviso’s historic heyday—when the hustling and bustling port city at the Santa Clara Valley’s northwestern fringe was like a South Bay version of San Francisco’s Pier 39. 

Today, residents say the small community is not the end of the world, but it’s certainly on the edge, butted up alongside tidal marshland home to ducks, egrets, seagulls, pickleweed, endangered salt marsh harvest mice and collapsing wooden structures boarded up with plywood.

When Amelia Vahl first heard of the property where she would start a restaurant in 1939, the story goes that she asked, “Where’s Alviso?” Eight decades later, bartender Frank Rebozzi says Vahl’s remains somewhat of a local secret to everyone but a few dozen patrons—mirroring an episode straight out of Cheers, complete with a man named Norman perched on the corner stool.

“It’s home to a lot of people,” Rebozzi says, pointing out original murals and wall decor that transports patrons back to another century, only a few miles away from the heart of Silicon Valley, which ushered the world into the technology age. “It’s rare that somebody walks in that I don’t know.”

Annexed by San Jose in 1968 and home to barely 2,000 residents, Alviso is tucked 15 feet below sea level, between the confluence of ponds, sloughs and waterways at the southernmost part of the South San Francisco Bay, where it meets the Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek. Whether staring off into the Bay’s rippling waters or the shiny new high-tech buildings and hotels visible on the outskirts of town, there’s a calming stillness in the salty Alviso air, despite waterways historically choked with toxic runoff and invasive species—and a run-down business sector without promising investments outside of water treatment plants and regional landfills.

What has remained the same here is the seasonal flooding that has been a staple of the marshland’s history—from glacial meltdown forming the Bay’s shape around 18,000 years ago, to slough-side Ohlone villages harvesting salt and clams for centuries, to King Tides bogging down missionaries’ adobe homes in the 1700s. 

But in March 1983, El Niño storms wreaked the most palpable havoc after a muddy deluge engulfed the town in up to 10 feet of water for weeks. The toll of damaged structures was an estimated $6 million. 

Amelia Vahl didn’t jump at the opportunity to resume operations, after water rose halfway up its walls in the flood.

“But she got letters from customers pleading for her to reopen again, so she did,” says Elva Ruiz, who joined her mother and stepfather working at Vahl’s the year after the disaster, at a time when the kitchen still served Italian-style fine dining, complete with a seven-course Sunday meal and two-hour wait times. “I think if that happened now, they probably won’t do that again.”

Since the pandemic, the infamous Pepto-Bismol pink dining room has remained closed, leaving patrons munching on snacks and whatever dinner Ruiz has made that night. Last weekend, the menu was lasagna and enchiladas.

In between games of golf on the single arcade machine, many Alviso residents shared their grudges against the bad reputation the town has acquired over the years: smelly, run down and a landfill for everyone else’s trash. 

But others, like Rebozzi, save their breath, enjoying the peace and quiet that comes with being hidden away from the South Bay’s hotspots, while being thankful recent installations like tide gates and an 8-foot water drainage pump connecting the community’s center to the slough will keep the town dry—for now. 

“It’s funny, you’ll get people to come in for the first time and go, ‘It’s such a small-town atmosphere, there’s nobody here,’” Rebozzi says. “But talk to people that lived here their whole life, who go, ‘It’s so fucking crowded.’”

A DIRTY PROJECT

Rechelle Blank has gleaned an encyclopedic knowledge of the issues that have plagued Alviso for decades during her nearly 30 years working for the Santa Clara County Valley Water Conservation District—an agency created in 1929 to combat the growing threat of floods—and nine years spent on the South San Francisco Bay Shoreline Project.

Blank says it’s a race against the clock to get ahead of a major storm that could put the region underwater again, so the shoreline and salt pond projects are working in tandem—balancing man-made flood management engineering with nature-based mitigation solutions.

Specifically, gently sloped horizontal walls called “ecotone levees” can help restore the Bay’s wetlands and provide high ground for wildlife, mitigating flooding and erosion while the current levees—which aren’t up to federal safety codes—remain in place. 

While navigating thick layers of bureaucracy made up of several governmental and environmental agencies, such as the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, is vital to ensuring effective projects, the sluggish timeline has led to costly delays. A feasibility study alone took four years before design and construction could begin on Phase 1 in 2015.

While working with the Army Corps of Engineers was supposed to ease financial strain on local jurisdictions, their strict requirements for material placed where the land meets the water doubled initial estimates, now pricing the specially engineered dirt from $50 to $70 per cubic yard. Blank says federal monies approved in 2018 to fund the undertaking is capped at $124 million.

While a seemingly simple “dirt project,” that dirt ain’t cheap.

The sheer amount of material of the levees and ecosystem restoration were estimated to run $194 million in 2015. Now six years later, that price-tag is $545 million—nearly triple digit growth—for only four miles of levees. 

Having originally committed to shell out $54 million for the project, Valley Water is now left footing the skyrocketed bill. 

Comparatively, Foster City spent $65 million for six-and-a-half miles.

Fortunately, 70% of voters across nine counties approved Measure AA in 2016 to utilize parcel tax revenue to help chip in $500 million over 20 years towards the project’s costs. Additionally, United States Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who helped purchase the salt ponds with $100,000 in federal cash in 2003, has requested another $1.6 million in federal funding for Santa Clara County’s shoreline project, dedicated within the government’s budget through September 2022.

But both Blank and her Valley Water colleagues are frustrated that private entities, especially ones with fat pockets like Google, Apple and Facebook, may not pay a fair share for the protections the Water District is constructing.

“That’s a large gulp to swallow—to figure out which couch cushions you are going to look under to find the dollars,” Blank says. “What they say about the story of stone soup—everyone brings a little something and you can feed everyone—I really think for these projects, people need to start thinking that way.”

MOUNTAIN HIGH, VALLEY SLOUGH

Not nailing down a plan isn’t an option, as Santa Clara County has one of the highest risks of damage from tidal flooding in the state.

After an estimated 90% of the South Bay’s shoreline has already been lost to commercialism, development and erosion, Valley Water is tackling the herculean South San Francisco Bay Shoreline Protection Project, hoping to protect Santa Clara County’s 18 miles along the water from flood and erosion. At the same time, the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project is focused on returning the region’s former 100,000 acres of marsh to the water’s ecosystems. Together, the efforts work in tandem to bring the Bay back to its original habitats—or as close as possible. 

Phase 1 of the project—installing four miles of levees stretched in front of Alviso—has already taken 15 years to study, plan, contract and fund. But what was first billed at $194 million has ballooned into a $518 million project—a staggering 276% increase. 

With the help of partners within the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, California’s Coastal Conservancy and 40 cities across nine counties along the water’s edge, the goal is to identify and restore almost 15,000 acres of Bay Area wetlands in the former Cargill industrial salt ponds that colorfully ring the South Bay, stretching from the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge’s shallow tidal wetlands to Google and Facebook’s high tech campuses on the western shores. 

As development has crept ever closer to the water’s edge, hundreds of billions of dollars of buildings, homes and infrastructure are at risk. That includes the 70 properties Google purchased for campus expansions in the last five years in Sunnyvale and Facebook’s neighboring 57-acre campus worth $2.5 billion. Several other campuses like Oracle and Cisco are just a bit further inland.

But those catastrophic risks are better safeguarded than the historically marginalized communities that live, work and play in these sinking wetlands named after the first Spanish colonizer to claim the area home in 1775. 

According to mapping from the San Francisco Estuary Institute, the risk stems from the fact that the South Bay is a “wide alluvial valley,” formed between parallel fault lines and ridges of the Coast Range. Its long, shallow and flat geological features boast an 8 foot tidal range that can hold massive amounts of water, most of which flows from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. 

Before the South Bay was dammed and diked, a “tidal prism” of fresh water mingled alongside salty tides from the Pacific Ocean flooding into the estuary’s mouth at the Golden Gate. 

Roy Hayes, director and former commodore of the South Bay Yacht Club, envisions a day when open bay waters return to the sloughs, allowing the club built in 1905 to recapture its glory days of hosting 50 boat slips along 440 feet of docks. 

Hayes says doctorate-level water experts estimate that change might happen within the next 50 years, as the South Bay Salt Pond restoration aids the return of native wildlife and vegetation. He can already see the water getting higher both at the club and when out duck hunting, as the tides flow up against the sloughs and yellow doorways along the marsh horizon.

“I have to give the Water District a kudos here,” Hayes says, looking out at the water from the Yacht Club’s crow’s nest. “They have done a pretty good job of coming up with a whole master plan for this area.”

But all of that depends on whether Alviso can keep its head above water—nature be damned.

According to Erin Zimmerman, a long-time environmental and political activist with the Climate Reality Project’s Silicon Valley Chapter, the sea level has risen 8 inches since 1900, and estimates say another 1.2 feet is possible in the next two decades. 

An August 2020 report from the California State Legislative Analyst’s office painted a  “worst-case scenario:” sea levels in the Bay rising anywhere from 3 to 7 feet by 2100.

These risks are compounded by more frequent and more intense storms, such as atmospheric rivers; researchers predict a three-foot flood has a 68% chance of occurring before 2030. That could reach 100% by 2050. 

“I want to see our yacht club become more of a yacht club,” Hayes says. “I’ve always said we’re not going to be happy unless we have boats.”

‘THERE’S A TRAIN WRECK COMING’

As if skyrocketing costs and rising tides weren’t enough for the Bay and Alviso to weather, environmental experts have warned of a looming dirt supply shortage crisis from California to the Mississippi River. 

That’s a problem, since an estimated 477 million cubic yards of mud and dirt are needed for the South Bay’s levees to stay above rising water levels within the next century. That’s the equivalent load of up to 48 million dump trucks loaded with dirt, which began arriving within the salt pond berms adjacent to Alviso’s marina in 2018.

Those heaps and mounds of dirt are necessary, after the land physically sunk as groundwater was pumped to irrigate the Valley of Heart’s Delight’s blooming orchards. Once the aquifers were depleted, Alviso reached its final resting place 15 feet below (current) sea level.

But Blank says if maps of the South Bay’s shoreline from 2005 and 2018 were overlaid, nothing has really changed yet. Even after construction waited for planning, researching, contracting and permitting to be completed, the contractor hasn’t started tackling the former salt pond berms, currently only hauling in and stockpiling dirt.

“That material wasn’t any kind of engineering placed to serve any purpose,” Blank says, adding that costs double the original estimates halted that progress. “It was kind of like ordering an extra light bulb for your car’s headlight for when it goes out.”

Before those shovels get back in the ground in Spring 2022, researchers from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment published findings in 2021 that a seawall building outside of San Jose would force 36 million cubic meters of water—enough to fill 14,400 Olympic sized pools—to be redirected somewhere else.

Anne Guerry, chief strategy officer and lead scientist for Stanford’s Natural Capital Project, says installing levees and sheet panel walls—like the ones protecting Foster City, for example—in the South Bay would be “the single worst thing we can do,” adding that one high tide could potentially inflict upwards of $723 million in damages from flooding in cities from Redwood City to Napa.

Blocking tides with sea walls has a history of success, whether outside cities like New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or the ancient Roman Empire, when Constantine the Great had marine barricades constructed to safeguard the city of Constantinople in 448 A.D. But Guerry explains those benefits aren’t the same, since the Bay is an enclosed system, rather than open towards a body of water as massive as the Pacific Ocean.

“The bay is like a giant bathtub; if you start building walls in one part of the bay preventing water from getting into that part of the bay, that water is going to go somewhere else,” Guerry told me. “It takes a very long time to get from San Jose to Napa, and so I think people kind of process things at the scales at which they experienced them—not thinking about the whole bay as a system.”

That bathtub analogy gets even more complex, as past successful solutions may not withstand climate change’s impacts on water temperatures, sea levels and storm intensities.

Yet meetings between government agencies Valley Water and the city of Sunnyvale show that seawalls are a part of years-long plans to tackle this issue. And that creates a difficult position for local decision makers: wait for the entire Bay Area to get a plan together or act locally now?

Guerry’s not suggesting people in Alviso and surrounding communities not protect themselves and their livelihoods, but rather explore creative, complex solutions like managed retreat, which the Netherlands employs to make more room for its rivers to safely expand. 

Even though that policy is less attractive (and almost implausible) in Silicon Valley, where families have lived for generations, multi-billion dollar companies are headquartered and available, affordable space to relocate nearby is scarce, Guerry says any plans need to pay careful attention to which communities are making flooding worse and which ones are bearing the brunt of the impacts.

“I just feel like there’s a train wreck coming,” Guerry says. “I think that we have to show less hubris about where we develop and how much control we have over the environment around us.”

But for Dick Santos—the area’s Valley Water director, whose family has lived in the town a century—the idea of abandoning Alviso due to its aquatic vulnerabilities is a terrible concept to ponder. He argues the difficulties are worth embracing in order to preserve Alviso’s history as the gateway to Santa Clara County’s prosperity, especially after decades of what he considers as neglect from San Jose elected officials. 

“This project is very complex, even though we’re talking about dirt,” Santos says, applauding Blank’s tenacity in preventing the whole project from potentially going under. “For me—being born and raised there and losing everything I owned in 1956, ’58, and ’83—I’m just excited because climate change and tidal flooding is real. We’re just doing so much good for the environment, protecting people and property—it’s so vital and I’ve been blessed to be part of it.”

Blank says new research papers don’t throw a wrench in current plans; that’s mainly because decisions made during years of agency meetings are more or less set in stone for the first three phases of construction, and differences in perspectives are a common occurrence in this work. 

“I don’t want to say we’re stuck, but I just have to keep pedal to the metal,” Blank says, adding that her team would rather learn lessons as projects are built. “We just have to keep looking for the golden side of the situation.”

Additionally, she’s confident in the Army Corps of Engineer’s research, which requires that any plans they pursue in the Bay avoid flooding entirely. 

“There’s always going to be new data that makes you have to rethink something,” Blank says. “But if we had done that, if you look at all the projects Valley Water has completed, we would never get anything done … We’re going to be successful here, because this is what we’ve been aiming for since 2005.”

Residents, businesses and livelihoods have all put their faith in the efforts to keep the village below the sea alive and dry.

But even if Alviso ends up underwater someday, just like the former 24/7 bar at Sutter’s Place and the Alviso Speedway, local muralist and Vahl’s regular Emmett Dingel framed the predicament eloquently in white paint on one of the saloon’s walls: “Only Gone If Forgotten.”

Four basketball courts in Campbell Park became hallowed ground for Isaac Farfan during the summer of 2020, as the smooth, blue surface—its basketball hoops removed as a precaution in the earliest, panicked days of Covid—was the perfect place to take his roller skates for a spin. 

Off Campbell Avenue and down the grassy knoll, the 49-year-old laced up his black boots as boomboxes pumped out smooth rhythms and funky melodies—think Ginuwine’s 1996 classic “Pony” or “When A Fire Starts To Burn” by Disclosure—into the wide open suburban space, where he joined up to 200 other skaters spinning, bouncing, turning, dipping, gliding and slow-walking during events organized by Campbell Rollers and Skate N Chill. 

The second-generation San Jose native had just renewed his childhood passion for roller skating in November of 2019—in the knick of time for the quad wheels to become en vogue during the isolation of the pandemic. 

Farfan, a hairdresser-turned-skate-instructor, made it his mission to bring home Sunday school skating lessons he learned from Richard Humphrey, a living legend in the Bay Area who coined the choreographic style of “roller dance.”

“I feel like I’m teaching a lot of pandemic skaters how to roller dance—people don’t know the culture yet in the South Bay, but it’s getting bigger,” says Farfan, who also teaches at Aloha Roller Rink in East San Jose. “It gives me hope, but we just need to continue to build community.”

However, as Santa Clara County gradually shed public health restrictions, the 49-year-old waved the newfound Campbell community and classroom goodbye in April. The hoops were re-installed, and pick-up games took over once again.

“We had someone scoping out the basketball courts, because once those hoops went up, we knew we were going to lose our space,” says Farfan. 

Different cities have different styles, traditions and cultural centers of skating—Chicago flaunts intricate footwork inspired by James Brown’s over-the-top moves, and elaborate group routines and cross-floor slides emulate figure skating inside Detroit’s rinks. There’s also the fast backwards skills popular in Philly and Jersey circles, while the YEEK skating (Your Energetic Explosive Klimax) found in Atlanta delivers the exact raunchy energy its name promises.

While Oakland has Lake Merritt and San Francisco boasts both Golden Gate Park and the Church of 8 Wheels as local centers of skate culture, the Bay Area still overarchingly lacks its own unique sense of style. Some skaters chalk that up to the area’s cost of living and housing instability, especially compared to regions where decades of culture is built up over time through generations of community and institutional knowledge. 

The South Bay, specifically, has relatively slim pickings when it comes to finding slick surfaces to ride or its own homegrown skating legends. That is, aside from the cowboy hat-clad Bill Chew—whose roller skates, legend has it, accumulated 300,000 miles on San Jose’s sidewalks.

Skaters looking to pump their wheels around bowls and ramps in Silicon Valley often contend with dirty, derogatory or already “claimed” space. Folks itching to trek street terrains or smooth public lots have been getting the boot and even threatened with fines, and trail rides sometimes elicit glares from bikers and inline skaters. 

But Farfan is one of a dozen skaters working, organizing and skating to keep the community alive in the South Bay, creating and crafting a hub and culture of their own as they go. 

“I almost feel like crying, it’s so powerful and important to me,” Farfan says. “I love the regional skate communities, how different they are from each other. A lot of us organizers feel like we need to keep the vibe going and keep it alive here.”

CULTURE INFLUENCER

“Skating culture” is really just a catch-all term linking a number of different subcultures populated by people with wheels attached to their feet. Akin to Forrest Gump’s views on the versatility of shrimp, there are artistic skaters, rhythm skaters, street skaters, derby skaters, speed skaters and once-a-year birthday party skaters. Each of these subgenres exists within Silicon Valley. As folks continually see the same people each week, a sort of skate “family” often emerges as older O.G. skaters connect with and support newbies in their community. 

Most skaters also reject monolithic framings of roller skating within one-off “pop” moments—whether Xanadu-era roller discos at Brooklyn’s Empire Rollerdrome in the 1970s, hardcore roller derby brusers making laps in Whip It or even Team Pup and Suds’ sick street tricks from the 1998 Disney Channel Original Movie Brink!.

So, what exactly is the South Bay’s skate culture?

“I’ve been trying to ask myself that question for a while,” says DJ GA, a skater based in Oakland who has become a familiar face supporting the South Bay scene throughout the pandemic. “It seems as if a lot of people that have been here have been constantly moved in and out. There were a lot of skating rinks in the Bay Area back in the day—15 years ago.”

As venues closed, skaters either stopped or spread out to the sparse rinks still hanging on nearby, with years of hyperlocal skate traditions being lost in the process. 

“Because of that big ol’ mix and match,” GA says, “the culture of what used to be started to mix, mingle and not really be very specific, especially in the sense that it went from around five rinks in all the Bay Area to dang near only about three.”

When the pandemic began, GA says skating provided an out for depression. Wanting to help others’ mental health, too, he dove headfirst into organizing adult skate nights, where folks could wind, grind and sway to the music, as opposed to snooze-fest evenings spent looping in circles to whatever soundtrack a rink piped through speakers in the background. 

GA’s name and likeness-turned-logo have since appeared on countless event flyers around the Bay Area, taking advantage of Instagram’s window into their colorful, energetic nights. When the money earned from these events eventually surpassed a 9-to-5 income, he pushed his grassroots business even harder online and on skates.

“The main goal for me is just to influence as many people as possible in the Bay Area to build up skate culture here,” he says, adding that he’s referring primarily to authentic rhythm skating, which embodies the very notes, riffs and beats of music in every limb—whether House, funk, R&B or something in between. “That’s something that has been built up through generations from the African American perspective, but there’s no one type; It’s almost like calling it hip hop, and then having a bunch of different sub genres.”

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Rinks in the South Bay used to help keep the community together, especially as a safe and sober place for kids instead of being out in the streets. All but a handful of rinks have closed in San Jose, and those long-shuttered spaces are missing out on skating’s renewed popularity and continued growth. 

Cal Skate in Milpitas became a local favorite during its 34 years of business, as dozens of skaters weaved together on the glistening wooden rink nightly underneath disco balls and neon lights. The spot even hosted the roller skating events of the first World Games in 1981, featuring events like artistic pairs compulsory dance, the 5,000 meter roller speed skater race and roller hockey. 

Born and raised in San Jose, 22-year-old Joy Hackett waxes poetic about the energy forged between roller skaters in spaces like Cal Skate—an environment not always replicable in “real” life.

“Everybody’s sweaty, everybody’s learning, everybody’s falling, and it’s fine because you all come back up, and you feel the music together,” Hackett says with a laugh. “It’s centered around Black music—Cardi B, Drake, Beyonce—but we skate to whatever really, as long as it has a good beat. Even if the tempo doesn’t fit, the DJ will remix it a little slower, a little faster.”

When owners Chris and Trace St. Germain ultimately closed Cal Skate’s doors in August of 2011, the loss was huge. There were 18 rinks in the Bay Area when the rink opened in 1977. Only five rinks remained after its closure.

By the end of May 2014, the South Bay’s last remaining roller skating rink at the time—San Jose Skate—couldn’t stave off closure, either, as demand declined since the 1980s. Formerly known as Golden State Roller Palace and Aloha Roller Palace, Liz Ruiz has since revived the name and worked to maintain the original rink’s legacy. She purchased its entire fleet of skates and negotiated moving into a dedicated space inside the Eastridge Center. The space caters to all ages and styles, especially newcomers looking to try out a pair of neon orange rentals before committing to spending hundreds of dollars on skates. 

However, a hole is still missing in San Jose for skaters seeking spaces like Cal Skate that were historically kept alive by Black people and Black music—a culture masterfully captured in the documentary “United Skates,” including segregated “soul nights” and the strains of keeping hubs alive despite rising rents. 

“[Cal Skate] was the place people from Oakland would go skate, people from the Bay would go there, people from San Jose would go there—that was the Bay Area hub,” Hackett says. “That was a place that was upholding the Black rink skate culture, specifically.”

Some dedicated South Bay skaters now opt to trek thousands of miles to destinations like L.A. and Sacramento—seeking out the music, dances, physicality, fashion and vulnerability that comes from being surrounded by like-minded skaters.

Hackett says all the money and time spent on commutes, equipment, lodging and food are worth it; she can’t find those experiences anywhere else. 

“There’s music I haven’t heard, people I’ve never met and skating that I haven’t seen before,” she says. “It’s physical, gives you those endorphins, you look good—even when you’re sore—it’s just so worth it.”

Having grown up in San Jose, Hackett tries not to bash on the city too much. While she doesn’t think there’s been enough time or interest for the South Bay community to have carved out its own skating style and culture, she remains hopeful about the possibility of cultivating local spaces and culture as the years go on. 

But she says learning the decades of history behind roller skating must be vital to that growth, especially when folks are able to gain traction online as “influencers” without paying their dues or even unknowingly ripping moves off of legendary skaters in the community—an easier feat given skating’s quasi-oral tradition, despite troves of vintage skating videos available online. 

“While I can’t name off a bunch of moves—it’s harder to track because it’s completely visual—I think it’s just important to be aware,” Hackett says, “Recognize that there are people who have been doing this for a long time and also deserve to be heard. Just because they are not as good at using Instagram, just because they are not as pretty or appealing in the current market of visuals, doesn’t mean that they didn’t put in the work.”

SKATES WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE

Beto “Mooncricket” Lopez, who first donned skates along Oakland’s sidewalks as a child in 1979, is one of several seasoned skaters who have dedicated their lives to keeping roller skating alive and visible. When he’s not teaching classes or hosting events in places like Campbell, San Jose and Oakland, he’s skating across the state, the country and even across international borders—Covid restrictions willing.

The 47-year-old Blaxican filmmaker has documented hundreds of hours of this history since he first hit record on his parents’ video camera in 1992. However, he increasingly found himself alone or alongside a small group of his peers skating down at Lake Merritt. 

“Before the pandemic, we would get a little sad wondering, ‘Where is the new generation?’” Lopez says. “It was just the OGs all the time. Who was going to take over and continue the tradition?” 

But once the pandemic started turning life upside down in March 2020, Lopez said that answer quickly materialized with a “bang.”

An activity once steadily declining in the United States—comparing nearly 20 million participants in 2006 down to 11.5 million in 2016—roller skating thrived as an outdoor, distanced activity after the start of the pandemic. The surge was so high—and the supply chain so backlogged—that sold out inventories continue to plague newcomers. 

Minnesota-based Riedell, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers, outsold its capacity when workers resumed production in May 2020, overshooting by about 50,000 units. One inline skate company’s sales increased more than 300 percent by July, and experienced its largest shipping month in the past 20 years.

Before TikTok, Instagram or YouTube, the website SkateGroove.com was a gateway into local events and fellow skaters. While the format may be different, Lopez is thrilled to see more bodies strapping on skates, as long as newcomers understand the craft never died—social media simply expanded its reach.

“The way I see it, it’s not a comeback, it’s just another new wave of skaters,” Lopez says, countering innumerable articles from NBC News and Buzzfeed, framing the attention as trendy lockdown resurgence. “People are paying attention now. We see that the good thing we see is a good thing because that means it’s not going to die, it’s not going to disappear.”

SKATING IN CIRCLES

Roller skates have already withstood the test of centuries. 

According to “The History of Roller Skating,” John Joseph Merlin invented the first wheeled skate in London in the 1760s. The common two-by-two configuration arrived by 1863, courtesy of a New York City furniture maker, and the United States’ first dedicated “rink” was constructed in Rhode Island a few years later. 

Popularity surged as skating morphed to meet different cultural demands—a stress reliever during World War II, the hottest buzz music amid the 1970’s disco fever, a fluid venue for hip-hop DJs the decade after. 

Yet, skaters still find themselves spinning their wheels trying to find a forever home in San Jose’s public spaces. 

San Jose Roll Call organizer Lucy Chavez says it can be exhausting fighting for their own haven like Lake Merritt or Golden Gate Park—most recently through holding space at City Hall’s Rotunda—as their efforts have failed to gain much traction.  

“If you live in San Jose, you don’t get that real estate—that feeling of a community,” Chavez says. “[Downtown] is a good space to have it every Thursday, and we’re gonna continue to have it here.”

While co-organizer Justin Triano frames their “rebellious” work demanding public places to skate as their own modern-day “Footloose,” ​​he says at its core, skating culture thrives when it provides a sense of sanctuary—specifically an atmosphere not dependent on alcohol or drug—that is welcoming to all. 

“San Jose doesn’t have that space—manufactured or organically. There’s no space for skating to thrive or gain culture, and people will lose it,” Triano says. “It’s really easy not to have anything in San Jose, because Oakland, San Francisco and Santa Cruz are all right there. We should have a much stronger culture, because it’s flat and warm year round. But we don’t ever really invest in ourselves, because it’s more work to do that than just going somewhere else.”

Farfan is holding onto his seeds of hope for the South Bay’s roller skating future, especially providing a sense of belonging regardless of income, location or ability. 

“I get this emotional high thinking about it, and being [15 years] sober, this is what I thrive on these days,” Farfan says. “To do something like roller dancing, where it’s physical and we’re exhausted by the end of the day, but we’re all smiling—we need a space to do this publicly. We are building community, we feel like we’ve helped save lives during the pandemic, and it feels like this is just the start for us.”

At the tail end of May, 443 days after its closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tech Interactive, San Jose’s family-friendly science and technology center, reopened to the public. Throughout the busy day, staff was visibly enthusiastic to see its community members again.

On May 29, Tech CEO and president Katrina Stevens and board chair Chris DiGiorgio welcomed families back to the 132,000-square-foot center, guests lining up as early as 9:30am to experience the Tech’s uniquely artful blend of science, technology, and natural history.

Stevens, who assumed her position in October, was ecstatic not only to welcome back the public, but also the Tech’s staff, who made the reopening possible following last spring’s seamless transition to virtual and hybrid programming.

“We’re still thinking about what we can do to help our community, but also making sure our staff is taking care of themselves,” she says, noting that this was the first time she’s met many staff in person. The team is following Santa Clara County Public Health guidelines to ensure safety, and the museum will require masks and physical distancing for the foreseeable future—even after the statewide reopening on June 15th..

The event kicked off with fifth grade teacher Julie Hart of Forest Hill Elementary and her student Catherine entering the premises, marking the importance of all the hard work educators have done throughout the pandemic.

“It’s wonderful to be teaching in this direction, and this programming is what we need to continue to promote in our classrooms,” Hart says.

Throughout the last year, Hart has used lesson plans from The Tech’s programming—such as the Engineering and Design Challenge—to keep her students interested and engaged. An alumna of the Tech Academies program, which provides professional development to educators in underserved communities, Hart says she was grateful to see The Tech’s most recently opened exhibit Solve for Earth focus on sustainability practices with hands-on examples from Bay Area cities. The exhibit had a notable effect on her student Catherine.

“This is her first time at a museum, and she and her family have already signed up for a yearlong membership,” she says.

Stevens and her partner were likewise enthusiastic to visit the center Saturday, and are looking forward to bringing back the extended family.

“I have 22 nieces and nephews, and all of them are super excited,” she says. “I’m so excited to be able to share this with them.”

The Tech will be open weekends and holidays this summer as vaccination rates increase and families return to the facility.

The Tech Interactive
Now Open, $25/adult, $20/child
201 S. Market St., San Jose

Last weekend, LVL Up Respawn became the second arcade bar to open its doors in downtown San Jose. A spinoff of Campbell’s original LVL Up, the new bar and eatery features pinball, cabinet games and ski ball. It’s a reactivation of the former Bo Town Seafood Restaurant, which had been vacant since April of 2019. This is the second endeavor by LVL Up co-owners David Ramsey and Josh Schulenberg, who together took over the main floor of the former Gaslighter Theater in downtown Campbell. Stop by this weekend’s grand opening for drinks, games and bites, courtesy of pop-up-kitchen purveyor (and Metro contributor) Matthew A. Close.

LVL Up Respawn
Sat, Free
W San Salvador & S Second Streets

Back in the late ’90s, a trio of San Jose indie rockers released two full-length records and a handful of EPs, to little attention. Duster played dingy basement shows and never drove their tour van beyond the West Coast. Instead of recruiting a bass player, they dragged an old organ to shows with multi-instrumentalist Clay Parton tapping the pedals for some low end.

Their songs rarely had proper beginnings or endings. They were structureless, fuzzed-out, bare ensembles of spacey noise—slow, dynamic and supremely lo-fi. If a song featured singing, the vocals were treated as another instrument, not the primary focal point. There was a beauty to the delicate chemistry and bubbling emotionality in Duster’s tunes, whether anyone knew about them or not.

The band faded away, and in 2000 their label, Up Records, went defunct. Then something magical happened. The existing copies of their albums—dubbed to tapes and shared on peer-to-peer networks—made the rounds with a new generation of indie kids. Duster’s take on ’90s slowcore was looser and more experimental than that of their peers and inspired several now-successful bands, such as Girlpool, (Sandy) Alex G and Hovvdy.

“We were working in pretty simple modes,” Parton says, recalling the early days. “How simple can this be but still be devastating? Part of our charm is sounding a little fucked-up. We don’t really write songs and then record them; we use recording as part of the writing process.”

The cult of Duster was built without the help of streaming-music platforms. They grew their fanbase through old-fashioned word of mouth and chat threads on obscure music forums. Last March, indie label Numero Group issued a proper re-release of the Duster catalog. Demand was high. Their limited pressing of 500 three-LP colored-vinyl box sets sold out within a day.

And they began gigging together again—a difficult task given that Parton lives in Santa Cruz and the other two members (Jason Albertini and Canaan Dove Amber) live in Portland. They played their first show in December 2018 in Brooklyn to an exuberant crowd of mostly 20-somethings, opening for Duster-superfan (Sandy) Alex G.

In Dec 2019, Duster released a record of brand-new material, which they recorded on and off for a year and a half at Parton’s house mostly, on a four-track tape recorder, just like they did with their previous records.

“[Back then] all we had was a cassette four-track machine, and super shitty drums and super shitty everything,” Parton recalls. “We didn’t mind the immediate, disheveled sound of the four-track. When we recorded on 8-track or even the first 16-track machine we got, it was the same approach. Smudged is our thing.”

While their homespun aesthetic helped them build underground clout, the band discovered early on after re-forming that they wouldn’t be able to simply rely on their status as reclusive indie legends. It was a homecoming show—one of the worst shows they’ve ever played, at The Ritz in early 2019—that really pushed Duster to take their reunion more seriously.

“We played like shit,” Partons says. “There were weird vibes, something wasn’t right. And not that many people were there. Maybe San Jose crowds still don’t want to pay for shows. Maybe some things never change. It was like a true ’90s Duster experience, because we played some rough shows back then too.”

It was a turning point. In the wake of the Jan. 25, 2019 performance, Duster started working with a booking agent and sought professional help with the business end of the band.

Now when they tour, they can relax and focus on tending to their fans. They’re meeting a lot of kids that were toddlers—or simply glints in their mothers’ eyes—when they released their first album. It’s energizing, Parton says.

“Meeting people at shows is rewarding,” he says. “Sometimes, a crowd of people drawn together are all bonded by that common thread of feeling not-right, or isolated, alone, some variation on that theme—it’s almost like we are all taking care of each other, at least for a moment.”

Duster
Feb. 28, 9pm, $20+
The Catalyst, Santa Cruz

Along with orange sauce and Sleep, Duster is one of San Jose’s true cultural exports. Labelmates with Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, Duster’s Stratosphere is a belatedly beloved indie rock classic. Slow, spacey and minimal, they found their sound and then proceeded to knock it out of the park. While the trio of Clay Parton, Canaan Dove Amber and Jason Albertini haven’t issued a proper Duster full-length since 2000’s Contemporary Movement, all three have continued to write and record music. They returned earlier this month with a brand-new, critically acclaimed LP. Pick up the self-titled album on Muddguts.

‘Duster’
Out Now
Duster, Muddguts

Close out the summer by getting in touch with your primal instincts. This year’s Silicon Valley Music Festival focuses on primitive concepts and traditional art forms. The three-day festival will feature both visual and audio artists performing pieces inspired by and depicting human interaction with nature. On Friday, hear a musical interpretation of the Colorado River. On Saturday, check out a new interpretation of Igor Stravinski’s Rite of Spring. And on Sunday hear a chamber orchestra’s take on the same piece at Santa Clara University’s Recital Hall. That performance will be followed by a Q&A with the arranger, Anthony Rivera.

Silicon Valley Music Festival
Fri-Sun, 7:30pm, $5+
455 S 1st St, San Jose

The South Bay’s official Pride celebration kicked off earlier this week with the raising of the LGBTQ flag at San Jose City Hall. The party continues through the weekend with a variety of events—including a Trans and Friends Rally on Saturday and a night festival later that evening. Also on the completely fabulous calendar is Drag me to the Show, a drag queen show sponsored by LaRuce Beauty and hosted by Coco Minaj that features four queens from Silicon Valley performing a series of musical numbers. More info on all the festivities can be found at svpride.com.

Silicon Valley Pride
Thu-Sun, Various Times
San Jose

International Make Music Day is a massive, free, grassroots event celebrated simultaneously in more than 750 cities worldwide. The goal is for people to open their ears to the musical stylings of their neighbors or share their own tunes, fostering a stronger sense of community and a greater appreciation for musicianship. San Jose has been an official participant since 2017. This year, in addition to innumerable performances at shops, community centers and libraries, the city will be hosting events at Discovery Meadow, City Hall and the exotic Airport Terminal B. See makemusicday.org/sanjose for a full list of performers and venues.

Make Music Day
Fri, All Day, Free
San Jose

This Saturday, the 38th Annual San Jose Fountain Blues & Brews Festival unfolds in Plaza de Cesar Chavez, once again cementing the festival’s position as the longest running affair of its kind in the Bay Area.

The history is worth repeating. The birth of the festival takes us back to a version of San Jose that now seems like the vanishing Wild West, when the SJSU Associated Students Program Board oversaw a serious budget to book concerts on campus all year long. It also harkens back to a time when notorious rock promoter Bill Graham was still trying to prevent anything in San Jose from succeeding.

When a young Rick Bates first emigrated from Iowa to the Associated Students at SJSU, he hit up Ted Gehrke for a job. Gehrke assigned Bates to put up concert posters around town, but Gates eventually wound up with the title of contemporary arts chair, meaning he worked with Gehrke to book concerts.

In the spring of 1981, the prog rock band Ambrosia had just fired its manager and agent, so the group needed a gig. Working for the Associated Students, Bates booked them in the San Jose Civic Auditorium. The show sold out, giving the program board a pile of dough with which they organized the first Fountain Blues Festival, over the first weekend in May of that year.

These days, when students don’t get to experience a live music infrastructure of any sort, let alone getting on the phone with national booking agencies, it seems hard to fathom a San Jose in which such activity unfolded on a regular basis. In the late ’70s, for example, Bates helped book a Peter Gabriel show in the old SJSU men’s gym, located in what’s now Uchida Hall. Bill Graham called up Bates and tried to stop the show because Graham wanted exclusivity in San Francisco.

“At that time I was 20 years old, and he starts screaming at me,” Bates recalled. “I’m a snotty little kid, and I’m going, ‘Hey this is pretty cool. I must be doing something right. Bill Graham’s calling me up and yelling at me.’ I thought it was really pretty funny. We did another show with U2, and he did the same thing.”

The U2 show, with Romeo Void opening up, is now one of the most legendary stories in San Jose rock history. On the Irish band’s first US tour in 1981, Bates and Gehrke initially booked them to play a free show in the outdoor concrete amphitheater next to the Student Union. Bill Graham tried to stop the show because he wanted U2’s first Bay Area gig to be at the Old Waldorf, scheduled for the next night in San Francisco. Despite Graham’s threats, the free U2 show in San Jose went on. However, once it was booked and word began to explode, it was relocated upstairs into the old Student Union Ballroom, which is now a suite of antiseptic meeting facilities. Since the Brutalist-style Student Union structure was built on earthquake rollers, the over-capacity crowds pogo-dancing began to shake the building. Staff stood on both sides of the stage with ropes to prevent the speaker columns from falling over. At one point, Romeo Void’s tour manager got stuck in the elevator. People were scared.

According to those who attended, even with the stage verging on collapse, the young Bono was already on a path to rock stardom. He knew how to command an audience and work a room. The show was a smashing success.

Bates went on to manage several well-known blues and roots acts, including Los Lobos, who ended up opening for U2 on the Joshua Tree tour, putting Bates back in touch with Bono. At the time, Bono still remembered the harrowing SJSU gig.

When it comes to the Fountain Blues Festival, Bates speaks fondly of the original days. At the time, it just felt like a cool project for some students to work on.

“I always feel like sometimes things are just at the right place at the right time,” Bates said. “Everybody wanted to do it, and it was really successful. I never thought that it would last as long as it has.”