Classic ride connects five generations of one family
When kids today take a spin in the miniature police cars and fire trucks on the Mini Putt Putt ride at Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, they probably have no idea about the attraction’s history — or the special place it’s had in Ron Appleby‘s family for five generations.
Appleby’s mother, Maxine, used to operate the ride back in the 1950s when it was one of several attractions at Alum Rock Park and where he first rode it as a child. (Maxine, who passed away in 1991, also was the leader of her own band, Maxine Joyce & Her All-girl Orchestra.) After Happy Hollow opened in 1961, Mini Putt Putt was one of the rides the city moved there as it began returning Alum Rock Park to a more natural state.
Happy Hollow was where Appleby’s daughter, Christine Torres, took a spin in the cars in the 1970s, and then her daughter, Angelica Costa, got her first driving lessons there in the 1990s. Angelica lives in Vancouver, Washington, now but she brought her 6-year-old son, Ayden Costa, for a family visit to San Jose last month. You can probably guess what one of the planned stops was for Appleby, now 71, and his great-grandson.
POST-TRIANON PLAN FOR STEINWAY SOCIETY >> The Bay Area has announced a new lineup of venues for the Steinway Society’s 25th season, a situation forced by the sale of its longtime home at the Trianon Theater in downtown San Jose. Bay Area favorite Jon Nakamatsu will bring his piano skills to the inaugural Frieda Ann Murphy Memorial Concert at the Mcafee Performing Arts and Lecture Center in Saratoga on Sept. 21.
The season’s remaining four concerts will take place at different venues: the Hammer Theatre Center in San Jose, Independence High School in San Jose, West Valley College in Saratoga and the San Jose Woman’s Club. Go to steinwaysociety. com for details.
Kathy You Wilson, Steinway Society’s board president, put a positive spin on the vagabond season. “While we are sorry to lose Trianon as a venue for our concerts, we now have an opportunity to bring internationally acclaimed artists to a broad range of locations in the San Jose area,” she said in a statement. “We believe this will allow us to expand our audience by making classical piano music more accessible to both students and the community.”
LITERARY SEND-OFF >> Joint Venture Silicon Valley CEO Russell Hancock and his wife, Marguerite Hancock, hosted a reception at their Palo Alto home last Tuesday to bid farewell to Duffy Jennings, who served as Joint Venture’s communications director for the past 11 years. However, this wasn’t just a goodbye party; it also served as a book-release event for Jennings, whose memoir, “Reporter’s Note Book,” was recently published by Grizzly Peak Press.
I’m only a few chapters in, but I can already tell you it’s a must-read for anyone interested in Bay Area history.
Jennings, 72, was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle during the 1970s, and his book provides an inside-the-newsroom look at some of the stories that rocked the Bay Area during the decade, including the Zodiac killings and the slayings of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
The book, which is available at local bookstores and on Amazon.com, is prefaced with a quote by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who Jennings says even today can’t see him without flashing back to the terrible day she was forced by tragedy into the mayor’s chair.
NEW SERIES WORTH WATCHING >> Francisco Ramos, the vice president of Spanish Language Originals for Netflix, will help launch the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley’s new Latinx Speaker series on Aug. 2. Ramos will talk about the media giant’s investment in the Latino market with several new productions and how Latinos in Silicon Valley — as well as elsewhere — can help get their stories told.
The talk at the Rotary Summit Center in downtown San Jose starts at 11:30 a.m. and includes networking time and lunch. Tickets are $50 and can be purchased online at hfsv.org/news-events/ events, where you can also check for future speakers. MOVIES BY MOONLIGHT >> The San Jose Downtown Association is bringing animated heroes to St. James Park this summer with its annual Starlight Cinemas outdoor movie series. The free screenings start July 13 with “The Incredibles 2,” followed by “Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse” (July 27), “Ralph Breaks the Internet” (Aug. 3) and the original “Space Jam,” with Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan, on Aug. 17.
The free movies start at dusk, which is around 8:30 p.m. for the first two and 8 p.m. for the second pair, and will be preceded by an hour of family-friendly games. Don’t forget to bring a blanket and chair. For more details, go to sjdowntown.com/starlight.
ADDING TO SAN JOSE’S PLAYLIST >> In the discussion of songs dedicated to the fine pueblo of San Jose, Neil Farris points out that I had a glaring omission: the Cornell Hurd Band’s “Saturday Night in San Jose,” which appeared on the album “Doing That Unholy Roll” in 1980.
Farris, who owns Hijinx Comics in Willow Glen, noted that the album was the top-selling LP at Tower Records in Campbell for two weeks that year, and he would know, because he was a guitarist at the time for the band, which was around from the late ’70s through the early ’80s.
Meanwhile, David Cohen, the former publisher of the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, says he’s thrilled that so many songs have been written about the city.
“Why not present all of them in rotation and show how popular a muse our city of San Jose is?” he asks.
Maybe Pandora should start a San Jose station.