Council members need to get out more

... or at least off their duffs

I've come to learn over the years of covering City Hall beats for various newspapers that council members don't get out much. They rely (too) heavily on people contacting them with gripes. If the individual behind the gripe is a campaign contributor, they are listened to. If not, the council member feigns pity.

It doesn't require more than a walk through Las Animas Park in Gilroy to understand that royalty is severely out of touch with the commoners. My favorite in-your-face-to-the-fiefdom example is the sprinkler system at the park. Like clockwork at jogging time, at dog walking time, at kids-on-the-way-to-school time, the massive sprinkler heads clang on and the trails are turned to creeks. I do think some of the water makes it to the grass.

If council members believe soaking fox terriers, short-clad runners and young tikes by creating Class III rapids out of the main trails at 7 a.m. is a good idea, then my theory is shot. They do get out; it's just that they are dumber than sun-baked granite.

Then of course there are the quality public servants they hire. In the case of Las Animas, it's actually not the parks crew. The parks crew are actually good workers, perhaps a little misguided about setting the sprinkler timers from 7 a.m. to, say, 3 a.m., but good workers. But the contractors the city hires to do all the stuff that city workers no longer have time to do since we all became stampeding buffalo about cutting taxes, are another story.

"Small men and big leaf blowers" should be the motto of Gilroy's parks contractors. The first time I encountered one of these folks was when I caught one blowing all the dirt from a hill into and onto the townhomes I live in.

"Hey, can you stop doing that? You're blowing all that dirt into the back of those homes."
"What?"
"I said ... can you turn that off?!"
(roll of the eyes then an exaggerated flip of a switch)
"Thank you. I said can you stop blowing all this dirt into the back of our homes?"
"It's what I'm told to do."
"You're told to soil our patios?"
"Don't know about that, but we are told to blow the leaves off the trails."
"But they are dirt paths; leaves are supposed to fall on dirt paths. You know, the charm of a park and all?"
"Just doing what I'm told."
"Then can you turn around and blow the leaves off the dirt in the other direction?"
"Then the dirt goes on the tennis courts."
"Which is worse than my patio?"
"Don't know about that, but I have to blow off the tennis courts too, so why would I just blow dirt on them?"

It was futile.

I wrote an email to the council. Couldn't be less interested.

Later that summer I was walking Killer and Pipi when I spied another contractor using a leaf blower. It was already over 100 degrees and not yet noon. For the rest of the peons in the county, it was a Spare the Air Day. Apparently that did not apply to really filthy pollution spewing two-stroke engines mounted on the workers' backs.

Yes, of course I sent an email to the regional air board, and when it blew me off (no pun intended) I sent an email to the California Air Resources Board. It blew me off, just from farther away.

But mon ami it got worse. One morning my wife, who is on two medications for asthma, and myself were walking in the park with Killer and Pipi and a contractor with a leaf blower was cleaning the dirt off, um, the dirt. I waved at him in the universal arm gesture of shutting down. He just looked at me. I yelled at him to shut down, just until we pass, that my wife has asthma. He yelled at us to walk around. We did, waving goodbye with another universally known gesture.

I guess once some men get their gas-fired blowers revved up, there's no stopping them.

And that never ends well.

About the Gilroy Post: http://gilroypost.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-blog-about-south-county.html

Eat, Pray, Laugh

Yuck it up

Why it matters: Big city comedy at small town prices. Drive a little and save a lot ... wait, I stole that, and in retrospect it didn't work out so well for them.

Tucked away next to a salsa dance studio in Gilroy's old downtown is a nondescript door plastered with show-bills. The door opens to a long, narrow hallway into the best entertainment venue this side of San Jose. The Gaslighter Theater reminds me of some of the great music venues I used to visit along Haight Street when I lived in San Francisco during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Nothing fancy but a whole lot of cutting edge music.

The acts are shuffled -- Saturday night piano bar with a focus on jazz, show tunes and pop. It's a sing-along Vaudevillian evening with no cover charge. Occasionally a concert with four or five acts for $12 is tossed in to mix things up. Fridays feature DJ-hosted and music-video dance nights for $7 a head. Comedy takes center stage on selected Thursdays. These acts are no slouches.
My wife and I visited on a recent Thursday to catch DNA, Sal Calanni and Don Friesen -- all for $10. Friesen http://www.donfriesen.com/newback.html headlined with his self-effacing husband shtick -- an absolute hoot.

At the bar we bought a couple of Polish. My wife added a beer to wash it down; I got a Diet Coke. We split a free bowl of pop corn. Total damage: about $10. Simple tables and chairs on the floor and along the elevated perimeter provided an intimate setting that allowed for great back-and-forth between comedian and audience. Behind us a gaggle of women were enjoying a Sex in the City night out. They were bawdy and boisterous -- the perfect comedy club patrons.

DNA was good; Calanni was better. Freisen was top shelf -- every bit as good as many of the acts I've seen at the far pricier Improv Comedy Club in San Jose.

Freisen won the prestigious San Francisco International Comedy Competition, the same competition the helped launch the careers of Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, and Ellen DeGeneres. He returned to San Francisco in 2005 to win the competition again, becoming the only comedian in the 30-year history of the San Francisco International Comedy Competition to win it twice. Freisen's style of physical comedy harks back to Red Skelton and John Belushi.

On the same block, at the Corner of Sixth and Monterey streets, is a great little tapas house called Lizarran http://www.lizarran-ca.com/. On the night we were there Lizarran offered a dinner package that included discount tickets to the comedy show. Ring them for more details.

All told we dropped less than $40 on the show, grub and drinks. That's a ratio of laughs per dollar you cannot beat in the South Bay.

"Eat, Pray, Laugh," to steal and then mutilate the title of Elizabeth Gilbert's book of a similar title, is an occasional romp through the South County's small but beloved arts community, its religious community and all the yuk-yuk stuff that happens in between. Send your ideas for EPL to dscribe@hotmail.com, and write "Gilroy Post" in the message line.

About Gilroy Post: http://gilroypost.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-blog-about-south-county.html