Fans mingle with NFL alumni at downtown San Jose benefit
Former San Francisco 49ers and San Jose State quarterback Jeff Garcia returned to his former downtown San Jose stomping grounds Thursday night for an NFL alumni event benefitting two Bay Area nonprofits fighting food insecurity — San Jose’s Hunger at Home and San Francisco-based The City Eats.
Garcia — still looking trim and muscled at age 55 — posed for photos and chatted with fans at at Sushi Confidential in San Pedro Square, which brought out tray after tray of dishes including sushi, sashimi, steak bites and vegetable tempura. The drink menu was appropriately football-themed with the blue-tinged 12th Man Margarita, a Patriot Dynasty (made with Canadian whiskey, ironically) and a 49er Mule.
Sushi Confidential owner Randy Musterer said he was happy with the turnout at the event, which was co-produced with Beyond the Game Health and the NFL Alumni Association NorCal.
Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney James Gibbon-Shapiro was there — not in his official capacity but as the new board chair of Hunger at Home, which provides food recovery services for large venues, including Levi’s Stadium, and works with partner organizations to distribute food every week to people who need it.
Gibbons-Shapiro said any funds raised at the event would be welcome, but he also viewed it as an opportunity to introduce more people to Hunger at Home’s mission, which you can also find out about at www.hungerathome.org.
SUPER BOWL LOVE STORY: Frank Larsen emailed me with the tale of the ultimate meet-cute that happened a decade ago, the last time Levi’s Stadium hosted a Super Bowl. His daughter, Lauren Larsen, was a Santa Clara Police officer tasked with picking up the Blue Angels flight time after their high-flying performance in the opening ceremonies of Super Bowl 50.
She became friends with the team and actually started dating one of the pilots, Matt Suyderhoud. They were married in 2019 and now have two children.
We’ll have to wait to see if any romantic seeds bloom after Super Bowl LX.
NAME THAT PARK: San Jose’s looking for community input on what the city should call a new 1.4-acre park planned for an area near Rinconada Drive, Almaden Expressway and Curtner Avenue. Plans for the park include a playground, a walking loop, a small pollinator garden and public art.
The two leading contenders 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 during the 1940s who was active in the Chamber of Commerce and was the first Asian member of the Rotary Club of San Jose. He also led the effort to preserve the original Ng Shing Gung temple, a 1888 building that was the last remnant of the Heinlenville Chinatown in San Jose.
Sweet, who was a U.S. Marine during World War II, started a law practice in San Jose shortly after passing the bar. He cofounded 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 civil rights group.
You can vote on your favorite through Feb. 8 at bit.ly/naming-rinconada.
PICK A CINEQUEST MOVIE: Cinejoy, the virtual version of the Cinequest film festival, held a series of festivals between November and January, featuring independent movies in the genres of thriller, comedy, drama and documentary. Viewers voted on their favorites, and now those finalists will be showcased in a Viewers Voice Festival of Festivals running Feb. 12-18.
Cinequest co-founder Halfdan Hussey says the kickoff event next Thursday will include a virtual red carpet, and a Q&A session with the filmmakers that will include an interesting twist — questions will be asked of an AI avatar of one of the movie characters from the short film, “Walking Fernando.”
“We’re going to talk to the actress in the movie, and we’re going to talk to the character that she plays as an AI figure, to learn more about that character, how they would think,” Hussey said. “So it’ll be this blend of humans and our imagination, of what this character might really be like.”
Throughout the week, viewers can vote on their favorite films and the top four vote-getters will be shown at the Cinequest in-person festival, which runs March 10-22 in San Jose and Mountain View. You can get more information and passes about the Fest of Festivals at creatics.org/cinejoy.