Sidebar: Let’s Get Coffee

Here’s to those who believe a good cup of coffee can turn the day around: a list of some of San Jose’s finest coffee shops.

1. Devine Grind

When you walk into Devine Grind, the manager, Winnie, will greet you with a warm smile. When you ask Winnie what she recommends from the menu, she will reveal that her cafe is famous for the Toasted Coconut Mocha. She will say it tastes best blended, but because of the unusually icy weather in San Jose, you just might have to try it hot. You may want to try it hot because of how divine it tastes, and you may want to indulge in an asiago cheese bagel along with it, which happens to be just the right balance of fluff and crunch.

Underneath all of that wonderful steamed milk is a dark, nutty coffee drink. Devine Grind is a great place to explore if you are in the mood for coffee with flavor.

2. B2 Coffee

This cafe is hiding in a corner of San Pedro Square Market. You’ll have to walk past all of the eateries to discover that though it may be hidden, it has certainly been found.

You can zigzag around this built out space to see the manager, Eric, taking orders and crafting otherworldly drinks.

Order any coffee drink you love here. They serve Verve and Sight Glass coffee and make their own vanilla and chocolate sauce from scratch on-site. The baristas will recommend the Vanilla Latte, which is delicious and showcases their latte art (seen right).

One plus about this B2 location is the abundance in seating. The airy atmosphere is lit by large windows, which supply natural light during the day, and there is free WiFi and plenty of outlets to fuel productivity.

3. Cafe Legato

Rodelio, the owner of Café Legato will most likely be nearby when you stroll into his joint. He will greet you with a kind smile and ask what kind of drink you like, if you prefer one with caramel, one with vanilla, or something simple. If you’re a caramel lover like me, he will whip you up something along the lines of this Iced Caramel Raspberry Macchiato. I couldn’t even wait to take a picture before trying it out. My excitement got the best of me.

Cafe Legato is a great place to visit if you want to satisfy your hunger and thirst all at once. Each food item is freshly made on-site.

This was the Veggie Grilled Cheese, which Rodelio made with sliced cheese, eggplant, sprouts, and mushrooms. And as a girl who isn’t afraid of her vegetables, I devoured that sandwich.

If Rodelio isn’t there the day you visit his café, you’ll be safe ordering one of the drinks under the “Signature Frappes” menu. They are all cold coffee drinks that Rodelio says have been selling like hotcakes.

4. Philz Coffee

When you walk up to this café during the day, there is a good chance that the line will be out the door.

However, after dark, there is a tranquil setting at Philz Coffee.

If you’re ever in the mood for a late cup of Joe, Philz is a great place to venture out to since they are open until 9 p.m. on weekdays and 8 p.m. on weekends.

If you’re ever in the mood for some of the best coffee in the world, Philz, still, is a great place to venture out to.

The Tesora blend is always in demand at Philz, and the baristas will cater your cup to your preference of cream and sugar. My personal favorite is the Iced Ecstatic, which is a blend of Philz coffees that is unlike anything else I’ve ever tasted. Tip: If you bring your own mug here, you can pay for a small size of whichever drink you ordered.

Happy sipping!

IMHO #2 (EC)

We are failing as a system. The racial incident at San Jose State University was on the 7th floor of Campus Village Building C.

Recently, I discovered which dorm room it was happening in.

I lived in that exact same dorm room two years ago, during my first year of college.

This incident is a reminder to San Jose State that although we are living in our utopian bubble, racism still exists. Not only does it exist, it is happening in our own backyard. While the four white students being charged for the crimes claim it was all meant in a humorous and satirical way, the evidence indicates other intentions. There was Nazi imagery on the dorm walls and the students referred to the victim as “three-fifths,” as a reference to an old constitutional provision that regarded slaves as three-fifths of a person. San Jose Mercury News reports that two years ago, a San Jose study found students describing incidents of racism on campus–years before the dorm incident occurred. This study was never publicized. Mohammed Qayoumi, the current president of San Jose State University, separated the diversity group that conducted the study and started his own diversity group that has only met once until the racial incident in the dorms occurred.

Where is our institution headed? We are paying far more attention to football games and campus renovation than the way students are being treated. The university offers an exceptional Women’s Studies program that stresses such systems of oppression. The Women’s Studies program is now being threatened by budget cuts.

It is time to wake up. It is time for San Jose State University to stand up and announce who we truly are. We are not a racist campus. We need to start showing it.

Copy Edit the World #3

I found this error in my Psychology textbook. The editors may have overlooked this caption–the word “respect” is misspelled.

This error was in the Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food–a published text. In this sentence, “Anderson” is possessive. It should read “Anderson’s.”

This assignment page has a wealth of errors. The number 1 should be written out and “PM” should be written p.m. There is also an error in the quote–“identifies” should be “identities.” After the word unexamined, the quotation mark is before the period punctuation mark. The quotation mark belongs after the period.

IMHO #1

Racial profiling must stop. It is a fatal issue when news stories like this and this are no longer shocking, only disappointing. My level of disappointment, however, upon hearing such stories, never decreases. It only spikes each time a police officer or neighborhood watch member takes the life of an innocent human being. In September, ex-Florida A&M University football player Jonathan Ferrell was shot to death by a police officer when he got into a car accident and tried to get help from a nearby house. The woman living in the home called the police when she did not recognize him. Let’s give this woman the benefit of the doubt–perhaps she was living with a childhood stigma. Perhaps she had a phobia of someone breaking in to her home. However, the chances of the woman calling the police if the person frantically knocking on the door was a ten-year-old girl would have slimmed down to almost none. According to Kelly Welch of the University of Pennsylvania, the term “criminal predator” is a euphemism for “young black male.” Unfortunately, Ferrell fell under this category, and was shot several times by the police and died at the scene. The police officers were responding to a 911 call regarding “breaking and entering” when he ran towards them. Why did the police officers feel the need to shoot him multiple times? He was unarmed. A relative story was reported about a Florida man that was shot 15 times–but luckily survived–by authorities on his own front lawn when they mistook him for a car thief.

In the case of the second story, a similar situation as Jonathan Ferrell’s was reported. Teenager Renisha McBride was “accidentally” shot in the face when trying to seek help from a homeowner after a car accident. However, details on this case are not clear as of yet. It appears that the 19-year-old was in the accident two hours before the shooting, so it is still unclear exactly what happened. Still, the shooting was ruled as a homicide, but no charges have been filed. When police tried to file charges, the prosecutor sent them back and is conducting further investigation. However, the fact that the shooter pulled his gun is a clear sign of him feeling threatened. Why are black women suffering from the same stereotypes as black men? It seems as though they are being dehumanized and when people pull triggers so quickly, it makes you wonder what we are doing wrong as a society, as a whole, to destroy the identity of an entire culture.

Fish Out of Water

I was in Philadelphia for the Public Relations Student Society of America’s National Conference about one week ago. The conference was held at the Loews Hotel, and almost everyone who was attending stayed at the Loews. The sense of community at the hotel was incomparable. I would walk into an elevator full of strangers and they would all yell, “Hi!” I felt more at home in a city across the country than I do in San Jose sometimes. I quickly realized it was not the city that was home. It was the people. I decided to visit my friend from high school, Jill, at the University of Pennsylvania during one of the nights of my stay.

She called me with excitement a week before to let me know there would be a mixer with her dance team, the Quaker Girls, the night I was visiting her. “Look cute!” she told me. I was already kind of skeptical about the crowd of girls she was inviting me to socialize with, so I brought along a friend from the conference with me. She and I got to the event and quickly realized that we were not dressed up to par. All the girls were in dresses and heels, while we were in jeans and beanies. We are PR professionals. We weren’t going to let that stop us. I walked over to the host and introduced myself and she gave me an awkward glance and a weak handshake. It seemed as though none of the people at that mixer had ever introduced themselves to anyone. We were constantly being ignored. It was as if we were invisible. The most awkward part about this mixer was the Icebreaker. Everyone gathered around in a circle and said a little about themselves and followed the introduction with their favorite dance move. They actually performed their favorite dance move. After all of the unwelcoming glances we had received, my friend from PRSSA and I sat on the side and watched as everybody interacted in this Icebreaker. We looked at each other and–as if to speak with our eyes–decided to leave before it got any worse. I called a cab and it arrived within five minutes. We made up an excuse to Jill that we had to leave early because there was an emergency at the hotel with our other roommates. We did anything we could to escape that uncomfortable night.

WC: 403

Japanese Internment Memorial Essay

The city of San Jose is filled with many gems, from artwork to street vendors and captivating museums. One may easily walk past an important part of San Jose on 2nd Street, but if it does catch the eye, the sculpture is entirely riveting. The Japanese Internment Memorial is a tribute to the Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which permitted the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. The Japanese Americans were forced to evacuate their homes and relocate and remained in the camps for up to four years. There were countless property and personal losses since only 150 pounds per person was allowed on the transportation used to get to the relocation centers.

In San Jose, Japantown was set up right next to Chinatown by 1902. There was an abundance of businesses in Japantown catering to Japanese American men. After the relocation, almost all of Japantown’s businesses closed down. Once the executive order was revoked in 1944, some people returned from the internment camps to San Jose and were able to restore the livelihood of Japantown. The neighborhood still exists today on Jackson Street. Interestingly, Yoshihiro Uchida Hall (a classroom building at San Jose State University) was a transfer point for Japanese Americans when sending them to the internment camps. Yoshihiro Uchida is a judo coach at SJSU, and his parents and siblings were also concurrently transferred in Yoshihiro Uchida Hall during World War II.

Ruth Asawa was born in Los Angeles County on January 24, 1926. She worked in farms and attended a Japanese cultural school as a child. She was separated from her father when her family was sent to a separate internment camp from him in 1942. Asawa spent time in the Santa Anita and Rohwer internment camps. She received her education in the arts at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, CA.

The bronze memorial in the city of San Jose depicts scenes from the Japanese Internment camps, from relocation to the camps themselves. One of the most striking details is the barbed wiring on both sides of the wall. After further research, I discovered that it is curled on one side, representing the Japanese farming community in California before relocation. The wire is straight on the other side of the wall, representing barriers for the internment camps. Each detail on the bronze sculpture is so intricate; from the women’s skirts and aprons to the young children’s toys and even the people’s hands and fingers. A second vignette that I will forever remember is the loss of personal belongings when a family is being relocated. There is a part of the wall which displays the family getting rid of their things, with an “Evacuation Sale” sign on the front porch of their home. A young girl is crying as her father is getting rid of her doll; it is heartbreaking to see people losing the things that keep them sane.

WC: 503

WOW #10: Pilfer

1. Pilfer

2. Source: The NY Times, link

3.  After months of tense negotiations over the size and role of a postwar presence in Afghanistan, senior North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials say they are planning a more minimalist mission, with a force consisting of fewer combat trainers and more military managers to ensure that billions of dollars in security aid are not squandered or pilfered.

4. Pilfered: v. To steal, especially in small quantities

5. Aladdin pilfered some apples from the market to feed himself and Abu for the night.

WOW #9: Threadbare

1. Threadbare

2. Source: The New York Times, link

3. A few times every day, the high-speed train between St. Petersburg and Moscow barrels through the threadbare town of Lyuban.

4. Threadbare: adj. (of cloth, clothing, or soft furnishings) becoming thin and tattered with age; (of a person, building, or room) poor or shabby in appearance; (of an argument, excuse, idea, etc.) used so often that it is no longer effective

5. The U.S. government’s threadbare excuses to go to war with every third-world nation began hurting the nation’s global credibility.

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

 Z.Z. Packer uses various storytelling techniques in her book Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. She is constantly using figurative language, such as similes, metaphors, personification, and hyperboles. She personifies things like the sunset and leather in The Ant of the Self when she writes, “The sunset has ignited the bellies of the clouds,” and “He settles deeper into his car seat…the leather sighing and complaining under him,” (p. 73, 78). Packer uses an abundance of similes, such as “He…[looks] into the unlit burner as though staring into the future,” or “He’s banging words into the dash as if trying to get them through my thick skull” or “The birds could land anywhere on Lupita and she’d wear them like jewelry” (p. 73-74, 79). She uses italics and capital lettering to emphasize dialogue, such as, “Do you know who you’re talking to?” (p. 75) or “THAT’S RIGHT! YOU’RE TALKING TO RAY BIVENS JUNIOR!” Packer sets the scene with comparative description and more figurative speech, like “Indiana farmlands speed past in black and white. Beautiful,” and “It is completely dark and the road is revealing its secrets one at a time.” She paints her characters in a humorous light, even when the situation is serious. In The Ant of the Self, the deadbeat dad—Ray Bivens Junior—is seen as pesky and unproductive, who “sucks his teeth, making a noise that might as well be a curse,” (p. 81). When he speaks, he “starts up,” and he calls his son words like “pussy,” (p. 81, 84).

WC: 247

NPR Radio Interview Analysis

I listened to a story called Taken by the Taliban: A Doctor’s Story of Captivity, Rescue on October 12 on the program All Things Considered on NPR. Before beginning the actual interview, the interviewer got three to four quotes from the the interviewee, Dr. Dilip Joseph, to introduce him and give background on his career. Dr. Joseph then told the story of his tenth trip to Afghanistan, where he came face-to-face with the Taliban. The interview was presented as both a traditional interview, with bits of narration by the interviewer throughout the story. Rather than asking lots of questions or building up to questions, the interviewer seemed to have a step-by-step plan. He filled in information throughout the interview. It was almost like a performance, where the interviewer would tell listeners what happened while Dr. Joseph described each scene of the incident. The interview was definitely more organized than impromptu. There were few inadequate answers, if any at all, but if a response did not satisfy the interviewer, he encouraged Dr. Joseph to say more by commenting on his statements. The interviewer and interviewee’s relationship was formal. They did not directly speak to one another; instead they cohesively reported Dr. Joseph’s story. I learned that doing your research and knowing your subject is everything in an interview. This interview (like most NPR interviews) was so well-developed that the listener could listen with ease, without confusion, and with certainty that the interviewer knew his subject without question. The story was delivered with perfect timing and different aspects of the story were revealed at the right time (one soldier did die in the Taliban encounter, this was revealed in the last two minutes of the interview).

WC: 283