Post Street’s new trees could grow on people
With less going on in downtown San Jose this summer, you might not have noticed it, but the shady canopy of trees on Post Street is gone. The city of San Jose removed all the trees from the short stretch between First and Market streets earlier this summer and replaced them with new, younger trees.
If San Jose Jazz’s Summer Fest hadn’t been sidelined because of the coronavirus pandemic, you can bet there would have been a lot of unhappy people sitting in the sun, as Post Street is usually home to one of the fest’s stages.
So what happened? It turns out to be a case of having the wrong tree in the wrong place.
City Arborist Russell Hansen said the old trees were Aristocrat pears, an ornamental species that was popular in the late 1980s and into the ’90s when downtown was undergoing its major redevelopment. They were seen as an alternative to the Bradford pear, a tree that was prone to having its limbs break off. Unfortunately, the Aristrocrat has developed a reputation for having the same problem, as well as disease issues.
“In this case, several of the trees had fire blight damage and the Downtown Association had provided multiple examples of large limb failures which had failed in the past couple years,” Hansen said.
The city considered removing only the most problematic trees now and removing others over the next few years, but ultimately decided to do it all at once to avoid creating another problem — future trees might not have as much room to grow.
The new trees are Armstrong maples, which are said to grow fairly quickly and produce red flowers in the spring, with leaves that turn red-orange in the fall. That should produce a good look for the narrow street, which is home to the 55 South cocktail lounge, CREAM ice cream shop, Don Pedro’s Mexican restaurant and two of San Jose’s LGBT bars, Splash and Mac’s Club, among other businesses.
LOS ALTOS STAGE COMPANY SEES STARS >> It’s an easy bet that few Zoom board meetings build up as much anticipation as the Los Altos Stage Company‘s right now.
The board’s June meeting was “Zoom bombed” by Mountain View native Nick Spangler, who has gone on to a splendid career on Broadway, appearing in “The Book of Mormon” and “Cinderella.” Everybody got a good laugh out of it, which was set up by board member Mike Kasperzak.
Then board member Vivian Lufkin asked her friend, actress Polly Draper, who hit it big on “thirtysomething,” to drop in on the July board meeting. Draper popped in with her husband, actor and musician Michael Wolff. And they zoomed in their friends Tony Shalhoub of “Monk” fame and his wife, actress Brooke Adams. Any bets on who drops in for August?
PALO ALTO ART CENTER MAKES ‘SAFE’ MOVE >> The Palo Alto Art Center was optimistic when it put out a call for entries that it would be able to present “Safe,” an exhibition on what it means to be safe these days, as an inperson show in September. It’s become less and less likely, however, that an opening this fall will be possible, so the Art Center has canceled the juried exhibition. Artists who have already submitted will have their participation fees refunded.
ERROR OF GLOBAL PROPORTIONS >> In my column last week, I said 101-year-old U.S. Army veteran Sidney Walton had traveled “across the globe” to fight in World War II, a phrase that rankled reader Inge Jordan. “We do not travel across the globe, we travel AROUND the globe,” Jordan wrote. “Unless, of course, you think the Earth is flat?” Point taken. Now, I just have to figure out where to put that in my error file. Grammar or geography?