The South (Bay) Will Rise Again

“Do you know the way to San Jose?  They’ve got a lot of space . . ." - Burt Bacharach, sung by Dionne Warwick

Okay, that song's a bit dated.

My home is now Los Angeles, but my heart and mind are still in Silicon Valley, where I grew up.  Home was Cupertino, which was a pleasant and now posh town west of San Jose.  Long ago, the town had traded its apricot and plum orchards for Apple Macs and iPods.

  My friends and I really didn’t appreciate the area while we were growing up.  It was “boring,” with “nothing to do.”  We were right:  there was nothing to do but WORK.  Unlike our pretentious neighbors who lived off of trust funds or dividend income (Santa Cruz, San Francisco), or had guaranteed lifetime academic employment (Berkeley), most people I knew in Santa Clara County had to take risks and their lumps on the job market.  We never had a “real” city—downtown San Jose is well, nice, but there was no excitement compared to San Francisco or even the East Bay.  Silicon Valley, again, is where people worked—dad (or mom) was an engineer, and mom (or dad) was a teacher.  And while there was no glam or urban grit, it was safe familiar.  Yes it got crowded; maybe it would have become a real city if folks from the east coast hadn’t been in such a hurry to move for jobs and a fantastic climate.

This was not bland suburbia.  Unlike awful regions like metropolitan Atlanta, Dallas, or even outer Washington, DC, my valley had character:  San Jose and its surrounding towns each have their own center; each has its origins in the arms and orchards of a century ago.

The meteoric rise of this area is an amazing post-war story.  In 1950, San Jose had 90,000 residents; recently it has passed Detroit as the USA’s tenth largest city.  The spectacular sun and weather long attracted people from all of the USA and then the world.  Started by a couple entrepreneurs named Hewlett and Packard, this trend accelerated as more smart kids attended Stanford and other local universities—they then decided to stay, invent, and innovate.

It hasn’t always been easy.  Ranch homes priced in the $40K range in the 1970s have exploded in value, making it tough for many kids to stay.  Rapid growth led to choking traffic, even after the much anticipated 85 highway opened in the 1990s.  With an entrepreneurial spirit comes growing pains; recessions often hit Silicon Valley hard as the region reinvented itself to defense contracting from agriculture, then from semiconductors to the Internet.

Now Silicon Valley is undergoing another rebirth.  Green technology is taking the region by storm.  When I attended InterSolar last year, the countries with the most representation were Germany, China, and . . . Silicon Valley.  The range of nascent technologies is tremendous:  sexy solar, steamy solarthermal, and sleek wind companies are abundant, but so are cerebral firms in spaces such as smart grid and energy efficiency.  There’s a spirit of not only where we can go in 10-20 years, but what we can do now to make do with the energy we’re using now.

This pragmatism is in tune with Silicon Valley’s politics:  Santa Clara County is generally Democratic, but not dogmatic—and unlike its sanctimonious sisters, Santa Cruz and San Francisco, it’s knowledgeable, not knee-jerk.  Yes, the area embraces capitalism, but now with the excesses of Wall Street for the ostentation of Texas.  And yes, there was silliness during the dot-com bubble, but now Silicon Valley sings a different tune; smart appliances and energy-saving gadgets are the cool new wares that local geeks show off.

So yes, DC’s our capital, New York’s our bank, Chicago’s our architect, and LA’s our film star.  But Silicon Valley is America’s brain, and anyone who grew up there should be darned proud of it.