SoFA Street Fair will be wall-to-wall music
The spring edition of the now biannual SoFA Street Fair will fill downtown San Jose with music from 2 to 9 p.m. on Sunday. How much music? There are 84 acts scheduled to play on 15 stages within two blocks of the arty South First area. There will be stages outdoors as well as in bars, cafes and restaurants.
Universal Grammar and the Changing Same are programming the main stage on San Carlos and South First streets with Afrolicious, starRo, and No Water After Midnight. Organizer Fil
Maresca figures it would be possible to catch about five minutes of every single act during the event’s sevenhour span, but who really wants to do that? (If you want to try, you can plan out your listening pleasure pretty effectively at http:// sofaspring16.sched.org. ) There’ll also be vendors and mural artists around, and the Underground Wrestling Alliance will be having bouts throughout the event.
Maresca sees the revived SoFA festival as the musical counterpart to the monthly South First Fri- days art walks, much more than the original version of the fair was in the 1990s.
“It’s still a community event, but more about the music community,” Maresca said. “Most attendees the past two years were musicians or music fans. And these musicians were older — many of them from the early days of the Street Fair — who brought their kids. Not because we had a special play area but because they wanted their kids to see what a great music community we have here in San Jose.” E-BIKES IN PALO ALTO: Silicon Valley already has a love affair with electric cars, and electric bikes might be next.
The Electric Bike Expo running Friday through Sunday at Stanford Shopping Center will feature more than 100 e-bikes available for test rides from different manufacturers — including South Bay-based Vintage Electric. The styles range from mountain bikes and beach cruisers to cargo bikes and commuters.
There even will be a couple of “electric bike” celebs on hand: Susanne Bruesch, European director for eCycle Electric, will make an appearance as she’s on a 2,200-mile ride from California to Colorado on her Haibike, and Mike Minnick and his dog, Bixby, who have traveled thousands of miles together on a Yuba electric cargo bike and will be kicking off a new tour from the expo to break the record for longest electric bike ride (and encourage pet adoption along the way).
Get more information at www.electricbike-expo.com. HISTORY’S IN THE CARDS: Mid-Century Modern architecture expert Heather David has put together an eye-catching deck of playing cards featuring images of iconic “Bay Area Modern” structures, including an entire suit devoted to the South Bay. They’re currently listed on Amazon and Etsy, and she’s hoping to get them into stores soon.
If you want to get your hands on them now, though, sets are being sold at the Preservation Action Council of San Jose’s Historically Huge Rummage and Salvage Sale at 260 S. 13th St. And you never know what else you might find at the sale, which started Thursday and continues from 8 a.m. until dusk Friday and 8 a.m. until noon Saturday. Contact Sal Pizarro at spizarro@ bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Facebook. com/mercurynews. aroundtown and Twitter. com/spizarro.