Vacant lots and bulldozers don’t always get me down.
Forty years ago, El Paseo de Saratoga Shopping Center was a vibrant cosmopolitan epicenter of culture where monks and musicians gathered. It lives only in memory.
I am not suffering over this. If one becomes attached to a shopping mall, suffering will emerge because all shopping malls, especially in San Jose, are transitory. They all age. They all change. If the columnist fails to understand this, then he remains caught in a trap, grasping at impermanent phenomena.
Why am I telling you these things? Because right now, the Quito Road corner of El Paseo—today’s El Paseo—is gone. Flattened. Demolished. Don’t worry, it’s just one corner, so you can still hit up Noah’s Bagels and Panda Express.
On a recent visit, I couldn’t watch the bulldozers without memories of the original El Paseo center resurfacing, from back before the mall was destroyed the first time around.
Circa 1984, I bought my first European thrash metal LPs at Fantasy Records in El Paseo. The store was upstairs on the second level. That’s right—there were two levels.
At the time, El Paseo was a rustic open-air paradise with shady trees, fountains, courtyard spaces and walkways meandering over the water. I recall a radio station, a bookstore, a video game arcade, jewelry shops, a few music clubs, plus outré coffee concoctions at Perfect Blend. Even if I didn’t patronize every one of those places, I still remember them. Many of the retailers and restaurants emphasized healthy living or natural products, long before it became fashionable.
The dude who ran Red Planet Comics was an original thrash metal ambassador of the South Bay, introducing all of us kids to intriguing European albums that no one else carried—no one except for Fantasy Records.
If Satanic thrash metal wasn’t your thing, though, you could venture across the mall with your parents, head downstairs below the street level, and into a fantastic restaurant called Monk’s Retreat. It was also a wine cellar, with bottles from floor to ceiling. A giant statue of a monk, in robes, beckoned one in, as the customers descended into the restaurant for cheese fondue, chicken dishes and live classic guitar. From a kid’s perspective, it was so cool.
Another restaurant, Don Quixote, featured a conquistador theme and Catalonian dishes from Spain. My dad would pound glasses of sangria in that place, while sneaking me a few sips at age 14.
Right next door to Don Quixote was Booksellers—one of the greatest indie bookstores ever in San Jose. My mom would often take me there.
El Paseo had it all: backpacks, leather goods, pies, parrots, watches, water beds, violent thrash metal and even a business college. There was something for everyone.
Of course, nothing is permanent. As the years unfolded, demographics and shopping habits changed. By 1996, El Paseo had deteriorated into a half-empty ghost town. Many places closed and new ones did not want to open.
You can guess what happened next. In textbook San Jose fashion, the original rustic open-air complex was reduced to rubble and replaced with a soulless fabricated hellscape of chain retailers. A few indie restaurants came and went, but today, nothing interesting remains, which is why developers began salivating over new ways to smash the whole thing all over again. Sound familiar?
So, nearly 30 years after the original mall was demolished, the bulldozers have yet again leveled a piece of the current complex. Snazzy housing will soon rise on one corner, so that snazzy people can shop at Whole Foods. The remaining soulless fabricated hellscape of chain retailers will remain.
A wise guy from India articulated a term 2,600 years ago—the Pali word anicca—which meant impermanence. Everything arises due to causes and conditions, but everything is transitory.
To update this gem of truth, I will say this: Whatever gets built in San Jose will get destroyed 30 years later. Everyone who grows up in San Jose will eventually arrive at a point when everything recognizable from their childhood is now gone.
The old wise guy was right. The trick, as always, is to find contentment in the present moment. Next time I visit Panda Express, I will try to do just that.
Don’t you remember the Flamenco dancers at Don Quixote?
Thanks for this
Sing us a song of The Pruneyard?
“Soulless fabricated hellscape of chain retailers: – indeed it is. Hard not to yearn for what was, but I greatly enjoy your columns reminding me of the details, the inevitable demise, and the guidance to focus on the present moment.
I lived across the street at Duvall and Hamilton. Shopped at the same record and comic store. Took music lessons at West Valley Music. What I loved best was being able to cross the street on a Saturday night and attend Rocky Horror, Quadrophenia, or some other midnight movie.