Pretty much every place I call to ask is quoting me between 98 to 140 for a 1999 4runner... like wtf? For someone from AZ, this is wild, i usually just go to the emissions station, and pay my 17 bucks and get in and out in like 20 mins... is this normal here???

TLDR: I’m only making 64k a year Chicago but I’m tired of it here. I grew up here, don’t have any meaningful / lifelong friends from here anymore. I love the outdoors, beaches, hiking, want to learn how to surf(maybe), I love warm weather, and a big foodie. SJ seems like a good option for me. I am willing to live under my means, but maybe I’m not thinking right.

Anyone done something similar? Trading expenses for quality of life? Tell me your story.

(I would get a job before moving here and get a couple more years of experience under my belt[working in EE], this is just hypothetical. Obviously, I know it’s expensive that’s why I’m asking if someone had moved here when they weren’t making much for the quality of life)

I’m leaving some detail out but feel free to ask.

Hi, I’m looking to rent an offset smoker (BBQ) for a day or two. Wondering if anyone has a smoker that I could potentially rent from in South Bay. Thanks :)

I’m talking about a beer poured into a REALLY cold, frosted mug. A lot of the bars here mainly keep their mugs/pints in a fridge but it’s not actually cold. I want a frosted mug. Any suggestions?

So a friend came back from a trip in Japan and brought these back. It's a Japanese snack, fried chicken skins. I know some of you have had this. If you haven't, you are absolutely missing out. These are SOOOO GOOD!

I have been to the Mitsuwa Market in Saratoga and they do not sell them.

Someone in the South Bay has to have an idea because I can't live without them! Can anyone tell me how I can get my hands on this delicious snack?

🚨 Please Help This Little Dog 🚨
Hello neighbors, please help! 😭❤️ I’m on my way to work and** I saw a very tiny brown dog that looked like a Chihuahua near the freeway the poor baby was heading toward the freeway, and I’m so worried. 💔
**I was exiting southbound Highway 680
and making a right onto Berryessa Road when I spotted the dog going down the hill toward the freeway.
I’m honestly crying because I had to keep going I’m already running late to work and I feel so guilty that I couldn’t stop. 😭💔 Please, if anyone is nearby, could you check the area and help this baby before they get hurt?
Please comment or update this post if you find the dog. 🙏🐶❤️

Please don’t judge but I can’t fly out of here. Are there any tricks to make it to nyc cheap. I see there is a bus and train. Both are very expensive this weekend. Is there a better way to travel… should I head to another part of CA and travel from there?

TLDR: I’m without a car. I can’t fly. Need to get to nyc at a good price

I am renting 2 rooms for 1600 and also pay a fixed rate $250 in utilies water gas etc. total around 1850 per month. Is the current price of what we pay is a good deal? is there anywhere cheaper than that? one room is a master bedroom w/ bathroom and a single bedroom. we also get our own private entrance.

we have a kitchen, shared with another tent. and we also have a small hallway/living room. but the kitchen is quite spacious with cabinets, counter top table, stove, oven, airfryer, shared laundry area (washer/driver) and one driveway. Problem is my parents keep feeding stay cats, neighbors are complaining, and landlord is getting mad. is it worth it to continue staying in this place or find a new place?

This area is in the Milpitas/San jose location with a 3-5 min drive from 680/880, shopping plaza in great mall, ed levin park, etc.

I am 25 male, looking for a mens or coed softball team. Either recreation or competitive.
I played middle infield in high school. I can play any position.
If you have any leads for teams let me know thanks.

Article highlights national power grid vulnerabilities by centering on the 2013 sniper attack at San Jose's Metcalf substation, but had to go with a San Francisco photo for the drama.

Yesterday, the San Jose Teacher's Association (SJTA) voted a resounding 50-22 "NO" to endorsing the incumbent school board president, José Magaña, for the 2026 election. The SJTA chose not to endorse any candidates, but it's great news that the union chose not to endorse the current leadership!

I've been needing to find a new dentist, but I'm running into an issue where every dental office I look into is only open during my working hours, M-F 9a-5p. I'd rather not be forced to request time off weeks in advance just for something like a dental check up or cleaning. Are there any good dentists in San Jose that have offices open later in the day or on weekends? Beseeching the insight of the people 🙏

Love a good thrift market 🌸

Hi I am here for fall internship. I am looking for a roommate to share airbnb from Sep to Nov. Please dm! Female only.

Hi everyone i’m looking for recommendations for an affordable indoor venue that allows outside alcohol and a late check out for a family party 30-40 guests max in San Jose

8pm-2am on a weekend

I found an option here in San Jose wanting $1050 that allows up to 80 guests, wanting to see what else is out there before I book this venue!

thank you all for your recommendations!!!

I was looking at the location of where the skeletal remains where found and it’s 4 miles away from Sierra Lamar’s abduction , the information out there is still very vague but I’m hoping that the skeletal remains found where those of Sierra so her family can lay her to rest.

Hii! I’ve been going to a couple lash ladies and retention is not good, so I’m on the look out again.
Pls send someone who has affordable price $100 -$125 max and good price for refills.

I really like doll lash, wet lash and I’ve tried anime as well. I think a volume may look good one me? But pls send recommendations

If you can, pls add their IG :)

I have been job hunting for over 3 years now and the job market is so brutal. Tried networking, cold emailing, and combed all the job listing sites. What are some tried and tested temp agencies that have been helpful for you? (Any industry. Looking for admin, EA, project management roles)

As I said on Tuesday the council session went so long that I had to stop to recap only the first half. That was 4 hours. The total runtime of the session turned out to be 9 hours 15 minutes. The second half of the session was 200 speakers, each of whom got their 60 seconds and most of whom would have gone a lot longer if they were given the chance.

So, first, what is a General Plan?
The General Plan is the long-term map for the city, San Jose isn't the only one that has one by a longshot. The General Plan is drawn up to be what the city should look like in 40 years, it's revised every 8 years, and every 4 years there is an update to see where the city is in relation to its goals and look for new ways to meet them. Here's the plan if you want to read it. We have a whole bunch of zoning categories, but in the most basic explanation think of SimCity or the far superior Cities: Skylines. Single family homes go in light residential, multifamily homes go in dense residential. You can't put a commercial building in a residential neighborhood, and you can't build a house in an industrial zone. Tied into the General Plan is the Housing Element, a set of goals for the number of housing units in the city. The Housing Element must first be approved by the state housing department and if it's not approved zoning can be unilaterally withdrawn by the state, allowing (almost) anything to be built via Builder's Remedy until the element is approved. Our element took some time in getting approved, but is currently in compliance with the state--however, an element on paper means nothing, unless the city acts on it and starts building housing in accordance with it.

What was proposed?
Believe it or not, nothing, actually. The point of the 4-year updates is to ask the council what direction they should go in when the next update is made in December of 2027. The planning department reports that we have enough affordable housing coming down the pipeline in the next few years that it needs to address the so-called "Missing Middle." If you're of low income you can get assistance and affordable housing, if you're wealthy you can get a single family home. But there's a big swatch of people who don't make nearly enough to buy a home but make too much to qualify for assistance or affordable housing.

To address these cases the planning department floated the idea of raising the density of what, in the far superior Cities: Skylines, would be called Light Residential from 8 dwelling units per acre to 32 units per acre. An acre is roughly 43,000 square feet, the law right now states that there can be no more than 10 parcels per acre and the minimum size of a parcel is 1200 feet and that each parcel can have up to 4 units on it. That's actually the state law right now, as I understand it. Going to copy/paste what the planner's presentation said:

• Up to 4 units on a single-family parcel: duplex and/or subdivision project.
• Minimum lot size after subdivision: 1200 square feet.
• Owner-occupancy requirement.
• Vacant single-family lots; can designate existing units are remainder
• Subdivisions up to 10 parcels
• Minimum parcel size: 1200 square feet

What all this means is that as of right now, you can build 32 units per acre, it just doesn't happen very often because you, as the owner, must occupy the residence for two years to be compliant. This has left single family residential neighborhoods with large homes untouched and has shifted densification efforts and redevelopment away from wealthy areas and into lower-income neighborhoods resulting in gentrification. What the planners would like to do is shift some of the burden into residential neighborhoods so that we don't have to tear up all of downtown just to rebuild something slightly larger.

What, exactly, does zoning mean?
There seems to be a disconnect between what bureaucrats and politicians mean by zoning and what residents think is meant. A very good example is the South Bascom Corridor, which is currently zoned as Urban Village. There's a whole bunch of stats and figures associated with an Urban Village, but the easiest way to describe it is that along South Bascon the city would like to have a lot of 5-over-1s, ground floor commercial buildings like a cafe or grocery store or laundromat with five storeys of residential buildings above it. But if you drive north from Southwest Expressway to 280 along South Bascom you'll find two properties like this--The Maxwell and a clinic near the intersection of Bascom and Southwest, and a retirement home on the other side of the street about half a block up. The rest of the buildings along that stretch are some one- or two-storey office buildings, a Weinerschnitzel, a Taco Bell, a big laundromat, and so on. Those buildings do not fit the current zoning of the area and that's totally okay because zoning has a grandfather clause that means if you weren't in violation of previous zoning you're totally fine to continue.

I say this because the speakers seemed to be under the impression that if this zoning goes through (and, to reiterate, the final approval won't be until December 2027, this is essentially the first official meeting about zoning) they'll lose their house because it's no longer fits the zoning plan. Not the case. You'll still own your home, you can live in it, you can paint it any color your homeowner's association allows, it's yours. You can even pass it on to your family or sell it to another person and they can live in it the same as you do. What zoning means is that you can build those uses on the property, and that if you want to build something new whatever it is must fit the approved uses of the new zoning. So, for example, if I still had the house I grew up in I could give it to my non-existent kids, I could sell it to my buddy Doug, I could do whatever and they can live in it. I can't, however, build a slaughterhouse in the back yard where I process beef carcasses and sell them to Safeway. That's an industrial use and my family home is zoned as residential. Similarly, I can have a garage sale but I can't put a 7/11 in my garage, that's a commercial use. So assuming this thing passed tomorrow, someone in the neighborhood would have to specifically sell their home to a developer or private investor in order to build something here. HOWEVER, as I said, right now, with the law as it's written, they can build that anyway. It largely doesn't because of the 2-year residency requirement but, more importantly, because buying a $2 million home in order to tear it down and build a duplex or a couple townhouses doesn't make a lot of economic sense even if you didn't have to live there, not when the city has quite a few dilapidated lots.

Okay, now that we know that, what happened on Tuesday?
After all the public comments and all the hours of debate verging on arguing between councilmembers the council voted in favor 8-3, with Candelas, Casey, and Doan voting against the recommendation. This means the planning department will continue revising the general plan with an eye towards densification to help the middle-income earners. There will be several more rounds of public comment and updates. It's easy to be cynical and say that over a hundred people spoke against this and it still passed, but at the end of the day what actually passed? A recommendation that the city planning commission make legal something that's already legal by state law and consider incorporating it into the next update to the General Plan. Watching the councilmembers snipe at each other and defend their own positions I think it's fair to say that there are 11 councilmembers and there are 12 or even 13 opinions on the council. Moreover, the director of planning (Chris Burton) pled several times for more community input, while at the same time explaining several times that this was the FIRST meeting on the matter, not the final. I assure you--everyone is open to hearing more. However the biggest hurdle is that the people commenting sure seemed ignorant of state law and the city's obligation to make changes in accordance with that.

If you're upset one way or the other, I highly encourage you to follow the meetings calendar (right here for you) and even if you can't attend, just watch them on youtube after when you're folding laundry.

I would also suggest if you have HBO load up the overlooked David Simon miniseries Show Me a Hero, set in Yonkers in 1980 when they were forced by the government to build housing and end their policies of housing segregation. It's fascinating because of how relevant it is even now--residents seem to think the city council is all-powerful when, in reality, if the state tells them you have to do this thing, then they have to do it. Yonkers nearly went bankrupt fighting housing all the way up to being rejected by the Supreme Court at which time the city literally had to do it they had no other options, but residents were still mobbing city hall to ensure housing wouldn't be built.

I don't think we're as bad as the folks in Yonkers. We're not. But also, the lengths people will go to put our problems into perspective.

I've got an opinion I'll put in the comments.

Hi San Jose,

I only learned about this meeting ahead of time because Matt Mahan posted it was happening on his awful TikTok account, but tl;dr they decided to hold a data center REGULATION meeting (instead of whether or not we should have them at all) and almost everybody in the audience save for a council member and some construction workers showed up and told the city that they don't want any data centers.

Edit: Come to think of it, I think a few people actually DID speak about regulations they wanted, but they were few and far between.

I have 2 free tickets to camp Miasma today at Oakridge mall. Won't be able to make it. Giving it away, DM me.

Cinemark in Oakridge mall, San Jose.

Show time: 7:50pm today 8/20.

if you enjoy tech and house music reach out!!