Inspired by Phil Cousineau’s The Art of Pilgrimage and the poetry of Basho, I made a transcendental strip-mall journey to Senter Road.
To find the meaning of San Jose life, one must experience what others ignore. To see this way is to move closer to the secret heart of the world. Curiosity about the extraordinary in the ordinary is what quivers the heart of the traveler intent on seeing behind the veil of tourism.
Pulled along by the forces of suburban wasteland exploration, I recently reacquainted myself with the ancient-for-San Jose Caribbees Center. Located between the fairgrounds and Andrew Hill High School and adjacent to a few sprawling mobile home parks left over from the ’60s, Caribbees Center—with or without an apostrophe—unfolded as a long bustling strip of shops across a few different buildings, almost entirely Vietnamese. People wouldn’t normally visit unless they lived nearby, or unless they missed a bus stop and had to get off and go back.
In that sense, I felt grateful to be there. Much more interesting than the Grand Century Mall, Caribbees Center was a thriving, beautifully congested mess of commerce with a flavor of colorful chaos reminding me of many places I found throughout Southeast Asia. Don’t believe the negative Yelp reviews. It was quite fun to walk around such a place. The whole complex seemed more “vibrant” than anything in downtown San Jose.
As I took in angelic Vietnamese synthpop blasting out of the corner unit, I looked around and saw retailers selling mattresses, herbs, clocks, fabrics, massage chairs, pressure cookers, fans and various items. Colorful dresses and other clothing were displayed outside several stores. People and cars arrived and departed. Delivery workers rode up on motorized bicycles to grab fast food from a place I couldn’t pronounce. One shop allowed people to come in and refill their water jugs. There was also a laundromat and more hair salons than I wanted to count. Lee’s Supermarket was hopping.
At other nodal points, old men crouched over makeshift sidewalk tables or in pockets of the parking lot, playing board games. It felt like a miniature Vietnamese equivalent of Portsmouth Square in San Francisco. Just down the walkway, a few rail-thin dudes in white T-shirts congregated in front of one place, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the lotto results.
As I walked around, another passage from The Art of Pilgrimage came to mind. The practice of soulful travel, Cousineau wrote, was to discover the overlapping point between history and everyday life. This made sense to me, which is why I burrowed into the 1966 San Jose Shopping Center Guide for details.
The original Caribbees Center opened in 1961. By 1966, there was a Crown Supermarket, a 10,000-square-foot Giant Thrift store, a Del Monico’s Restaurant, a TV shop and various 800-square-foot spaces that rented for $150 a month, with “Trailer Courts, Inc” listed as the owner.
Then the United States took over the French colonial project in Vietnam and recklessly bombed the crap out of Southeast Asia for years, creating several hundred thousand refugees, many of whom eventually landed in San Jose and started vibrant businesses in ways the locals couldn’t. In the ’80s, another building was added to Caribbees Center and nowadays the whole place is a thriving Vietnamese complex.
As I continued prowling around, I noticed the current property manager’s office, replete with bars on the door. I poked my head in and saw a framed picture of Ronald Reagan on the wall, which was enough to drive me right back out the door.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed my rediscovery of Caribbees Center. One will not find this place in a tourism guide. Good. I’m not one of those “influencer” types, so I don’t “endorse” things anyway. I went back to Lee’s Supermarket because I needed some loose leaf tea and then went on my way.
In his travel diary Narrow Road to the Deep North, the poet-pilgrim Matsuo Basho wrote: “There came a day when the clouds drifting along with the wind aroused a wanderlust in me, and I set off on a journey to roam along the seashores.”
With no seashores anywhere in San Jose, I came to the realization years ago that strip-malls would just have to suffice.
And suffice they did.
