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

Charter Communications (sigh)

Why it matters: Because it happened to me. I doubt I'm alone.

“Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.”
- Herbert Hoover

It is not news to anyone that lives here that Gilroy and Hollister residents have crappy cable service. The crappiness of our service is multi-generational. Grandkids that grew up with crappy service are having kids that must endure crappy service.

Notice I said "must." More on that in a minute.

This morning while I was on deadline for a project my Internet access went out. I called tech support, which made me speak to a machine that required three attempts to understand that I wanted tech support (if you don't invest in good software, it's only your customers that suffer.) Then a recording came on indicating that there were "intermittent outages" and that Charter's technicians were working on the problem.

Life happens. Squirrels chew through cable. My acceptance was laudable.

A couple of hours pass and still no service. "Who are their technicians? Larry, Curly and Moe?" I mumbled to myself. I called back. This time I demand a human. Oddly enough the voice recognition software understood "Give me a fucking service tech!" I felt guilty. I was a little over the top, but a) I was facing a deadline and b) it worked. A very nice tech came on the phone, and within 60 seconds her and I discovered that the problem was not intermittent outages, but in fact Charter had "suspended" my service because our payment hadn't been made.

I asked the lovely voiced tech to hold while I bolted upstairs, tripping over my Lab mix on the way, to retrieve my bill. Now this in itself was an act of stupidity, as we don't have a landline and I ran upstairs and then down again with my cell phone in my hand. Somehow I needed to talk to her while I was downstairs. No, I don't know why. Hmm, there it was, in black on a white background, "Due date 07/15/10." Today was the 14th. A familiar emotion was coming over me I like to call the "Charter Burn." I become flushed, my blood pressure spikes, and Opus, the Lab mix, instinctively retreats to the back patio.

"But it's not due until tomorrow," I plead.
"Yes, I see that. Can I transfer you to the billing department?"
"No, I think I'll mosey down to the Charter office." I like to see Charter customer service folks' eyes dilate when they realize that there is no logical answer to a customer's dilemma.

A pleasant-looking young man greeted me, and I explained I had two questions: a) (I actually do talk that way; it drives my wife crazy) I want to know why I wasn't warned my Internet service was about to be "suspended" (thank god I wasn't being expelled). And b) why was it suspended a day before it was due?

"Because we are based on a daily delinquent cycle," the lad replied.
"OK, fair enough, whatever that means, but back to the question at hand, why was my Internet suspended when the bill wasn't due until tomorrow?" I asked again.
"A portion of your bill is (40-something days late)."
"A portion?"
"Yes," the kid said. "I show that $39 (can't recall the cents) of the amount due is delinquent." (First I was suspended and now I'm a delinquent. Sigh.)
"You mean it would have been delinquent had I not paid my bill by tomorrow's due date, right?"
"No, that part is delinquent."
"Look young man (that's another thing my wife hates; says I remind her of her father), I know Charter pays you enormous amounts of money to sit out here and be the punching bag for irate customers while your manager sits back there (I point to the blast-proof wall behind him) and, I don't know, fills out employee schedules or something, but you're not answering my question."

He begins laughing. Hard. I suspect his manager was in fact filling out employee schedules.

I look into his eyes, and see his helplessness. I can see he's in over his head on how to explain to Papa Taylor that a nameless, faceless cog that's probably out on the golf course right now makes up the rules, not him. I decide he's earned triple the pathetic pay he's actually getting, as there are doubtless 20 more of me on their way in to make his day just ducky. I smile at him, give him my check, and wish him a good day, knowing full well it won't be.

I became reflective on the way home, wondering how American businesses have strayed so far afield in the area of customer service. Charter is merely a microcosm. Then it dawned on me. Because they can.

I don't have the ability to fire Charter and hire Comcast. Our elected officials, who take enormous sums of money from companies like Charter, made sure that only one company can provide service to one area. Nice. Don't you wish your business could be granted that perk? I decided to take a look. Charter donated more than $180,000 to its Political Action Committee in 2008, and more than $53,000 more during the 2010 cycle. Its PAC then distributed that cash 58 times to the election committees of a few dozen House members and U.S. Senators during the '08 cycle. Charter is an equal opportunity vote buyer. Roughly, equal numbers of Republicans took the company's money as did Democrats.

How much influence do you think you bought with your $20 donation?

About the Gilroy Post: http://gilroypost.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-blog-about-south-county.html
Take a look yourself: http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/committees/charter-communications-inc-political-action-committee.asp?cycle=08
Employee relations: http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stock-alert/ccmm_brief-charter-pays-18-million-to-settle-suit-978729.html
Bankruptcy: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/charter-emerges-from-bankruptcy/

Why a blog about South County

What is The Gilroy Post?
The Gilroy Post is a blog for thoughtful, informative, and useful commentary focused on the southern Santa Clara Valley. Every post provides educated opinion supported by fact. It will always provide readers with links to data used in the commentary, as well as additional information the reader might deem useful. We will always tell you at the beginning why the post matters. It is biting and riddled with parody and banter. If it were a film, it would be rated PG-13, although some of our posts may warrant an R for language, but it is never gratuitous language.

Guest posts
Posts by readers are welcomed. In fact guest posts are desired. No member of the Post is paid. No advertising is accepted (I've seen first-hand what that does to the integrity of the commentary). We don't pay reporters pitiful wages and then hand them an agenda and tell them to get to work. Readers decide the agenda. Email a proposal synopsis to Dennis Taylor at dscribe@hotmail.com and we will be back in touch with you to chat about it.

Why South County?
Southern Santa Clara County is covered by two newspapers, the San Jose Mercury News and the Gilroy Dispatch. When someone is murdered or when a medical cannabis dispensary comes to town, South County might then warrant television coverage. With the cost-cutting measures and layoffs the Mercury News has suffered, editorial involvement with Gilroy is spotty. Rarely has there been thoughtful commentary on issues concerning Gilroy.

The Gilroy Dispatch has commentary. But the Gilroy Post offers an alternative to that commentary. Many times views expressed in the Dispatch are welcomed with Rush Limbaugh-esque shouts of "Idiot" or "You're a moron!" That will not happen here. Comments on posts will be thoughtful, dignified and respectful, regardless of the poster's political leanings, or they will not be posted. Period.

Lastly, South County is where I live. It's where my extended family lives. It's where my dogs hunt squirrels.

Rules
1. If you believe in what you say, say your name.
2. Anonymous posts will not be accepted. See Rule 1.