History San Jose

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Auto-Generated Transcript   SiliGoneValley-TapPlastics Tue, 8/16 10:34AM • 3:46 SUMMARY KEYWORDS plastics, cray, tap, display, clientele, measurements, replaced, computer history museum, stores, alameda, supercomputer, mountain view, unevenly, cut, work, plexi, trimming, individual, shrunk, task SPEAKERS Christopher Garcia   Christopher Garcia  Come with me. We're going to Silicon Valley   Christopher Garcia  TAP plastics, the fantastic plastic place. TAP plastics was a chain of stores that specialized in providing plastics for pretty much everything. They built. trophy cases they did. Replacement Windows, it was everything you needed. That was plastic or Plexiglas you would go to tap plastics for I only ever use two of them one in just outside of downtown San Jose, on the Alameda, or Yeah, the Alameda. Or maybe it was San Carlos, no, the Alameda. Stop questioning yourself, Chris. And the other one in downtown Mountain View. And what's impressive about places like tap plastics, is how thoroughly they have been replaced by online services. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It does make it a little harder when you have something in hand that you want to get replaced. And you don't have the tools to actually do the measurements, for example. But I used that plastics a lot when I worked at the Computer History Museum, most notably for the Cray one. So I was given a task more busy work than anything of putting new side panels on to the Cray one supercomputer so that we could display it and actually have people sit on it. This was a fun task. I did all the measurements and sent it in, went and picked it up and none of them fit. And I couldn't figure out why. And we brought it back again, and they cut a little slice, little off, they put it in. And again, it didn't fit out four or five different back and forth. We did until I realized what had happened. The original plates have actually shrunk. And we're actually almost completely loose of their side aluminum holdings. But when you measured them, you couldn't actually get them to be right in because they had unevenly warped. So some were much narrower than others. This was annoying. But that plastics bless them. They went back and they read cut and they retrained four or five times without annoyance, which is amazing, because I wasn't thinking about TAP plastics was it was a drop off and pickup sort of situation most of the time. Yeah, they had things on the shelves, things like Plexi, cleaner, all that sort of thing. Individual pieces, like if you wanted the display piece, you could almost always get it from the floor. But for the most part two was about trimming and cutting. And that's what I used it for excessively and I wished today, I have a display case I want to get a new panel for but there's no easy way to do that. And that's what tap plastics and other stores like that, that did things like plastic and wood cut paneling and so forth that were local, made possible was to not necessarily do it yourself, but to interact directly and to go back and forth with an individual spot. And I think we need more of that. I think losing that has been hard. I think TAP plastics is what I think of when I think of a store that recognized its customers and customer base and focused on them as their clientele so that they could keep a loyal audience and you know what, to this day me they have

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS places, gourmet, restaurant, fact, type, denny, mini, closing, town, growing, redefinition, local restaurant, sad, eat, diner, street, idea, visualized, exponentially, grahame SPEAKERS Christopher Garcia   Christopher Garcia  Come with me, we're going to Silicon Valley   Christopher Garcia  restaurants like mini gourmet have been squeezed out over the years. And that hurts because I loved mini gourmet. And it's not that what they're being replaced with is fundamentally inferior. In fact, a lot of the sort of family restaurants that have been blooming up your Applebee's, the slight expansion and contraction of Denny's places like Cheesecake Factory, that's sort of the new range that are growing still to this day, even with COVID-19, putting her on a lot of stuff. It's this idea of a differentiated diner type experience. And that's really what mini gourmet was, it was an old school type diner, the type of place we visualized from the 1960s. I'm not 100% Sure, when it opened, I think it was in the late 60s, possibly the 70s. But I remember in the very early 80s, the food was dependably decent, I would go there, I would get corned beef hash thing a toast is great. For a guy who doesn't eat eggs, it's always hard for breakfast. But it's this idea that we have places that are different. And right now more than any other time in the world, it is harder to be a different restaurant than ever before. And when you look at the list of places that are closing, because of COVID-19, it's not your Denny's your cheesecake factories, even though some of them did use this chance to close in fact, to at least to Wendy's, I know I've have closed because they just didn't get business anymore. It's this idea that they have less to lean back on that they're closing at a much greater rate. If you look at the list, you see places like Clark's how Capones all those sort of places that were identifiable by specific menu concept that weren't really themed, as much as they were just places to go eat. And mini gourmet was one of those. And again, it's another thing of the area losing its uniqueness. So let's be honest, no one came from out of town to go to mini gourmet. In fact, meaning remains two main sort of drawing points, I would say were people who were visiting the hospital across the street and wanted to go get food right after, or local folks, families in particular. And of course, you cross the street, you also had Saturday City College, which probably led to a fair bit of people to go and eat there. But this idea of a restaurant that is a local restaurant, it's slowly going away. And that makes me sad. And I wouldn't be doing a podcast like this if it didn't. But it does help realize that we either don't want these type of places, and I don't think that's the case. Or we just don't care enough to make sure they stay. The big problem with a lot of them, of course, is rent costs are growing exponentially. And the classic person that these type of things appeal to is on the lower side of the economic spectrum, while the upper side of the economic spectrum can help a restaurant survive. So in fact, the high price of a place like original Joe's is actually helping them stay alive. We're gonna see that it's just going to get worse, I think. And there are places that I will be incredibly sad to see go away. I'm sad to see many Grahame go away. But that whole part of town needs a redefinition. And the dream would be that that site would grow something that was local life. But I think we all know that's unlikely to be the case.

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SiliGoneValley-LaPaloma

SUMMARY KEYWORDS la paloma, santa clara, mexican food, pedro, restaurant, version, special occasions, drink, mexican, love, personal favorites, rehana, milpitas, authentic, great, islamophobe, guests, pandemic, comfort food, food SPEAKERS Christopher Garcia   Christopher Garcia  Come with me. We're going to Silicon Valley   Christopher Garcia  to our loyal guests since 1977 La Paloma restaurant has been a Santa Clara staple of delicious Mexican food in a warm and friendly environment. Thanks to our great team and loyal guests, we've had the opportunity to be the home of special occasions and general dining. We have made the extremely sad decision to close our doors may 1 2022. Due to the economic impact of the COVID 19 pandemic, and not being able to come to an agreement with our landlord. We thank you for your continued support all these years sincerely, La Paloma restaurant. My idea of what Mexican food is was not defined by my grandmother, who while Mexican was not exactly a great cook, but more by two restaurants both in Santa Clara aka poco sadly gone as well. La Paloma and this gave me a twisted version. Of course, one crispy taco shells, which took years for me to get into the soft taco mode, the thick layers of cheese on top of everything which I love to this day. But most importantly, this idea of mixing up rice and beans. But there's more to it. It's this idea that Mexican food can be a sit down food instead of just a grab and go food because of course I was eating Taco Bell from the age of like three, but the amazing, beautiful. La Paloma, a restaurant I still love to last time I went there probably 10 years ago. Now sadly, no less than that probably seven or eight. It's this idea of a warm, accommodating Mexican sit down place with all the sort of faux trappings of the location, you know, carved chairs for example, knickknacks, we've lost a lot of that type of Mexican food lately. We've still got Pedro's Okay, that's great. But Boyle Del Mar has gone to Acapulco, La Paloma and Luis addley looks to be a victim of COVID-19 just like so many other places. The best thing there of course were the drinks and I want to read to you actually, this is a rare occasion I read my own writing from Yelp, August 15 2008. If you toss Milpitas islamophobe endless goddesses Pedro in a blender with little ice, the frosty daiquiri that would result would be La Paloma. It's been around forever, and the food has gone up and down over the years and seems to be slightly above average. It does tend to be a little breezy, but you'll never notice because the bar does such a great job and just about every drink. I've even had an old fashioned there once and they did a really good job. Some of the food that has come and gone the boil come crema is one of my personal favorites. I don't think they made it towards the end and I I used to get it all the time. And when I stopped to make my own, it was based off of the memory of that version. I did notice that the service ranged from really good to really bad and goes back and forth like anywhere. But one of the things about La Paloma was it felt like a restaurant of the town. It felt like the Santa Clara version of Mexican food. I know it's not authentic. I know it doesn't have that sort of Christmas that freshness. But it was what Santa Clara can provide a not necessarily authentic but real and filling. And considering it lasted for 45 years. That's a pretty good run. And I I hope that my kids will get that experience this sort of comfort food version of Mexican food because they know taka Rita's because we have a taco Rehana in Boulder Creek that they love. But there's something special about this too, and I hope they get to experience it. Maybe I'll take them to Pedro's

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