The San Jose North Rotary Club has just become the San Jose Silicon Valley Rotary Club. The San Jose Athletic Club is now the Silicon Valley Athletic Club. And the San Jose Chamber of Commerce has called itself the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce for years now.
Everywhere you look, the simple and once-proud name of San Jose has been infested by the kudzu of “Silicon Valley.” Money is talking, and our ancient inferiority complex is raising its head once again. It’s gone too far. And we need to begin to resist the trend.
I understand that this is marketing. It’s not all bad. If San Jose wants to call itself the “Capital of Silicon Valley” in smaller type on its letterhead, I won’t howl, even though it’s demonstrably untrue. (The real capital is Palo Alto.)
For instance, I give the beleaguered Mineta San Jose International Airport a pass. If they want to do an advertising campaign centered on Silicon Valley, fine. (Their banners say “Silicon Valley Starts Here.”)
Carried too far
But all of this can be carried too far. Would Charlotte, N.C., call itself “Finance USA?” Would Los Angeles rename itself the “Entertainment Zone?” Would Midland, Texas, entertain the concept of “Oil Central?” The answer to those questions are no, no and no.
To check my instincts, I went to the library and pulled out the telephone directory — yes, such things still exist — for 1996, a time when San Jose was ascending.
The business white pages then showed 380 listings that began with “San Jose” and 105 listings that began with “Silicon Valley.” By 2012-13, the most recent book I could find, there were 220 that began with “San Jose” and 133 that began with “Silicon Valley.”
I can’t fully explain the dramatic drop in “San Jose” listings. But the trend is clear: There are more “Silicon Valley” entries and fewer “San Jose” entries.
And we’re increasingly using the hybrid “San Jose Silicon Valley,” which is like saddling a kid with a burdensome hyphen: Samuel Joseph Wilson-Bagel. (In a check of white pages, I couldn’t find any listings beginning “San Francisco Silicon Valley”.)
Even San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has shown a tendency to adopt the easy regional approach. In November, Reed announced the launch of a nonprofit to push his drive for cleantech firms. Its name? “Prospect Silicon Valley.”
And my own newspaper has dropped the title “San Jose” in certain contexts. The last bill I paid identified the publication as the “Mercury News, the Newspaper of Silicon Valley.”
A real place
I know that San Jose is not an island. It’s part of a region. City leaders often work with companies that are located in Sunnyvale or Santa Clara. But we shouldn’t forget that “Silicon Valley” is really more of an idea than a place. With all its warts, San Jose is a real place.
“The brand of San Jose has tremendous upside,” says Scott Knies, the executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association, which uses the subtitle, “Silicon Valley’s Center City” (admissible, kind of, in my book).
Referring to our more famous neighbor 50 miles north, Knies added, “Stop with the comparisons. Let’s be ourselves. We’re good enough.”
To which I say: Amen.
Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@mercurynews.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/scottherhold.
