Features & Columns

Little Portugal.

AUGUST

VTA rips up Little Portugal

A new rapid bus route through East San Jose was supposed to take a little more than a year, but delays, safety issues and a struck gas line forced the Valley Transportation Authority to consider $50,000 payouts to enraged business owners.

A very trashy idea

San Jose Councilman Johnny Khamis and Mayor Sam Liccardo want to deputize garbage trucks by equipping them with license plate scanners to download data on parked cars throughout the city. Privacy advocates complain the idea stinks to high heaven-but still not as bad as Newby Island.

Actually, we're phenyl-fluid

San Jose sued Monsanto, claiming the Big Ag conglomerate knowingly polluted the San Francisco Bay and its attendant tributaries for years with Polychlorinated biphenyls, commonly called PCBs. Monsanto was all, 'But ...'

Anya, get on up

Anya Kvitka, the Moscow-born and San Jose denizen, signed to Plug Research-the same taste-making L.A. label that discovered Flying Lotus and is currently home to Bilal, Milosh and Naytronix. "A lot of these people I've looked up to my whole life," she told Metro. "I just feel like, 'Holy crap. I'm part of that now.'"

Cake wars

The second-generation owner of East San Jose's Peters' Bakery-whose burnt almond cake is the stuff of local legend-found himself on the receiving end of a federal lawsuit for allegedly discriminating against a longtime clerk. Chuck Peters allegedly told a Mexican-American employee to lose her accent and lighten up about the term "wetback."