Former San Francisco 49ers and San Jose State quarterback Jeff Garcia returned to his hometown of San Jose Thursday night for an NFL alumni event benefiting two Bay Area nonprofits that fight food insecurity – San Jose Hunger at Home and San Francisco-based The City Eats.
Garcia – still handsome and muscular at 55 – posed for photos and chatted with fans at Sushi Confidential in San Pedro Square, dishing out tray after tray of dishes including sushi, sashimi, steak bites and vegetable tempura. The drink menu was appropriately football themed with the blue-tinted 12th Man Margarita, the Patriot Dynasty (made with Canadian whiskey, ironically) and the 49er Mule.
The owner of Sushi Confidential, Randy Musterer, said he was happy with the number of people who attended the event, which was organized in collaboration with Beyond the Game Health and the NFL Alumni Association NorCal.
Santa Clara County District Attorney, James Gibbon-Shapiro, was there – not in his official capacity but as the new chairman of the board of Hunger at Home, which provides food services to large venues, including Levi’s Stadium, and works with partner organizations to distribute food weekly to people in need.
Gibbons-Shapiro said that whatever funds are raised at this event will be welcome, but she also saw it as an opportunity to introduce more people to Hunger at Home’s mission, which you can find at www.hungerathome.org.
SUPER BOWL LOVE STORY: Frank Larsen emailed me about a great reunion that happened ten years ago, the last time Levi’s Stadium hosted a Super Bowl. His daughter, Lauren Larsen, was a Santa Clara police officer assigned to time the Blue Angels flight after they flew over the Super Bowl 50 opening ceremonies.
She became friends with the crew and actually started dating one of the pilots, Matt Suyderhoud. They got married in 2019 and now have two children.
We’ll have to wait and see if any love seeds bloom after Super Bowl LX.
NAME OF THE PARK: San Jose is seeking public input on what the city should call a new 1.4-acre park planned for the area near Rinconada Drive, the Almaden Expressway and Curtner Avenue. Plans for the park include a playground, a walking loop, a small pollinator garden and public art.
The two frontrunners for the park’s name are Bill Kee Park and Wester Sweet Park, with other options including Curtner Park, Rinconada Park and Tulares Park.
Kee was a Chinese American businessman in San Jose in the 1940s who was active in the Chamber of Commerce and the first Asian member of the Rotary Club of San Jose. He also led the effort to preserve the original Ng Shing Gung Temple, an 1888 building that was the last remnant of the Heinlenville Chinatown in San Jose.
Sweet, a former US Marine during World War II, began practicing law in San Jose shortly after passing the bar. He founded the African American Community Services Agency in San Jose, held a leadership position in the Congress of Racial Equity (CORE) and served as legal counsel in the 1960s for the Community Services Organization, a Latino rights group.
You can vote for your favorite on Feb. 8 at bit.ly/naming-rinconada.
CHOOSE A CINEQUEST MOVIE: Cinejoy, the virtual version of the Cinequest film festival, holds a series of festivals between November and January, featuring independent movies in the genres of thriller, comedy, drama and documentary. Viewers voted for their favorites, and now the finalists will be shown at the Viewers Voice Festival of Festivals that runs on Feb. 12-18.
Cinequest founder Halfdan Hussey says the premiere event next Thursday will include a virtual red carpet, as well as a Q&A session with the filmmakers that will include an interesting twist — questions will be asked by an AI avatar of one of the film’s characters from the short film, “Walking Fernando.”
“We’re going to talk to the actor in the movie, and we’re going to talk to the character he’s playing as an AI model, to learn more about that character, how they might think,” Hussey said. “So it’s going to be this amalgamation of people and our imaginations, of what this character could really be.”
Throughout the week, viewers can vote for their favorite films and the top four voters will be screened at Cinequest’s in-person festival, which runs March 10-22 in San Jose and Mountain View. You can find more information and pass about the Festival of Festivals at creatics.org/cinejoy.
