Whimsical mural adds color to Guadalupe River trail
There’s colorful scenery on display for people running or cycling along San Jose’s Guadalupe River trail near Santa Clara Street, thanks to a new mural created by artist Kristina Micotti.
The whimsical artwork features wildlife such as turtles and seabirds navigating their way down the trail on bicycles, skateboards and the like against backgrounds of bright yellow and green.
The second in a Guadalupe River Art Walk series sponsored by Pow!wow! San Jose and the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, this was the first public mural created by Micotti, who called the trail “one of the most beautiful places in San Jose.”
“From biking to bird watching, the trail has so much to offer our city,” she said. “The playful characters are my way of inviting the public down to the trail and to encourage them to enjoy it for themselves.”
It is playful and wonderful, but a gorgeous mural won’t be enough by itself to entice the public to visit the trail or even the park itself, with its issues of trash, vandalism and a recent fire at ranger station at Confluence Point.
Fortunately, there’s a massive effort planned for Saturday to turn that around.
To begin with, Steve Holmes and the South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition will have one of its regular bimonthly cleanups at 9 a.m., starting near the St. John Street bridge. They always can use more hands, and volunteers can sign up at sbcleancreeks.com.
But that’s not all. The Arena Green area — between the river and SAP Center — also will be getting some muchneeded love, thanks to a group of downtowners who believe more people would use the park if it was more inviting. Carl Salas — who’s been known to kayak on the river — will be helping with some of riverside cleanup and Julie Matsushima is leading a team to clean up the long-ignored carousel. The San Jose Conser
vation Corps is poised to paint walls and clean up trash around the St. John Street bridge and another group is tasked with cleaning benches, with help from Burdick Painting and Sherwin Williams.
Jose Uribe, vice president at Buccaneer Demolition, will work on restoring the ice skating monument on Autumn Street and will be offering demonstrations to anyone who’d like to learn how to keep it sparkling.
Making the park looking spiffy is only part of the goal. The rest is getting people to have fun there all day.
“We may have plenty of workers,” said Jim Salata of Garden City Construction, another architect of the big cleanup. “What we need is for people to be out there bicycling, skating, playing Frisbee, whatever they want to do.”
FOOD FOR THOUGHT >> The East Side Education Foundation has a “grab and go” crab feed fundraiser on March 20 to support scholarships and programs like Spartan East Side Promise. For $75 a person, you get a crab dinner that includes sausage, pasta and garlic bread, which you can enjoy while watching the online program that evening. But there’s a catch — you’ve got to order by Wednesday. Go to eastside-fund.org/crab_dinner for details.
Speaking of good news for hearty eaters, Original Joe’s in downtown San Jose is reopening for dinein service on March 18. That should give the waiters at the landmark Italian restaurant plenty of time to get their tuxedos cleaned.
SAVING THE BANK IN SARATOGA >> In the days before COVID-19, you might have stopped by the Bank in Saratoga on the way to a show at the Mountain Winery or elsewhere. It’s a wonderfully oldschool dive on Big Basin Way that really was once a bank — built in 1912 and serving that purpose until 1958. Len Sullivan and his wife, Lou, opened it as a cocktail lounge in 1972 and for the past 20 years, it’s been operated by the third generation of the family, Kirt and Donna Teeple.
But like everywhere else that slings whiskey, it’s been shut down for the past year and is in danger of not making it to a 50th anniversary next year. Johnny Abreu, a longtime friend of the Teeples, set up a Gofundme account to help keep the bar afloat, which has raised more than $31,000 toward a $50,000 goal from 238 donors. You can check it out at gofund.me/ e8957af7.
YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST >>
If you heard about Cirque du Soleil, Beach Blanket Babylon, the upcoming Van Gogh Impressions exhibit or countless other performances or nonprofit galas in the Bay Area, it probably was because of Charles Zukow. It’s true: Those of us in the news business don’t come up with all this stuff on our own.
The publicist is closing the curtain on a 35-year public relations career at the end of March, shutting down his eponymous agency to spend time traveling with his husband, John, and spending time with their six grandchildren. Zukow — whose life in PR was preceded by acting jobs that included a role in “Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke” — considers himself the “luckiest guy in the world.”
“Over the years, I have had the honor and privilege of working with some of the best and brightest — from staff who have inspired me every day and groundbreaking theater clients to nonprofit organizations that have made a difference in a community,” Zukow said. In a news release, of course.
TRAVELING COACH >> Wow. San Jose State’s Brent Brennan received well-deserved national football coach of the year honors for leading the Spartans to their first Mountain West Conference championship during a nightmare of a season. First prize turns out to be a road game at USC early in the upcoming season. No doubt, he’ll inspire the Spartans to rise to the challenge, but what did the second-place guy get? An opener at Alabama?