San Jose Is The Most Empty City I've Ever Seen 

Who would have thunk it? Legalize theft and all the stores close. I wonder why that happened? Oh well.

This guy has no idea what he's talking about. I live in San Jose and the city is really spread out. Downtown San Jose never ever had many pedestrians.

The vibe in San Jose is totally different. It's mostly suburban with a lot of families with children. Families don't go downtown every friday night to the clubs, so the demographic doesn't fit the vibe. If you want a party spot, most people goto the city (SF) for that. Downtown San Jose has always been a ghost town for the last 30 years, even before the pandemic, for the most part. It gets lively on weekend nights, but that's about it. Nowadays, most people are working from home and are hanging out around their local communities, but if you goto the family friendly areas of San Jose, you will always see activity there every weekend; but it only makes sense if you have kids. Another commenter mentioned Valley Fair & Santana Row, and that's where most of the patrons of San Jose hang out, where it's usually always bustling and crowded--but I have to say that is true for most malls in metro areas in general. If you've ever grown up in suburbia, the only action you will see is at the local mall. You should get footage from the local mall if you want to cover suburban city like San Jose, which has more single family lot homes than San Francisco (aka, mostly suburbia, which San Francisco is not). There are really no skyscrapers in San Jose. All the buildings there have a 15 story limit due to the fact that the downtown area is on the flight path of the airplanes landing in the nearby airport; therefore, I don't consider San Jose having any "skycrapers", as they will never go past 15 stories. Skyscrapers are more prevalent in SF or Oakland, where they don't have the same building height restrictions. I agree there needs to be more housing in San Jose, but the most desirable land in San Jose is not necessarily a condo or townhome; most people who live down here want a house with two yards (front and back) and the white picket fence, a.k.a. suburbia. That's the whole reason to move down in San Jose--there's more land compared to San Francisco.

shit, why it takes me 40 min every morning to drive through San Jose, staying in traffic, where all those "missing" people coming from

San Jose's downtown was never really filled with stores to start with. The presence of Valley Fair and later Santana Row just west of downtown San Jose pretty much sucked away all the potential stores from the city center even in the best of times.

Homeless in San Jose aren't clustered downtown because San Jose is a massive area. The homeless are in RVs parked wherever they can, often in highway underpasses, parks, anywhere along a creek (which fouls the water), or areas of low density commercial or industrial. They can get away with broken down RVs because code enforcement for things like broken vehicles on public street parking is way down. San Jose is a bit more active in trying to manage its homeless population compared to SF, but let's be real - that's not a high bar to clear.

Back in the 90s visited San Jose; went to a failed arcade area which looked like it could have been fun ..you know a beachy summer ...but it was gone & it appeared to me like the city had lost its community, its soul ....sad

East and west side of San Jose is where the families with kids live the North and Downtown area is where the houseless roam around peace ✌️💯

West Valley Mall & Santana Row Valley Fair is the largest mall, by area, in Northern California and has higher sales revenue than all other malls in California, including the two in Southern California which have larger area than Valley Fair. This is not counting Santana Row. Your video is misleading.

I was born and raised in SanJose. The late 80's through the 1990's was the golden time for restaurants, cafe's, comedy clubs and bars. Its true, all the food businesses are gone except for a couple Vietnamese Pho' restaurants. The City of Los Gatos, CA which was once are great place for food and microbrews is all closed up too.

I would hope every voter in San Jose who voted for the policies which have led to this disaster gets to have a first-hand experience of the violence of the lawlessness they created.

downtown san jose was dead in the 90s unless an event was going on or some clubbing on weekends

as a bay area native hearing this dude say the peninsula is the last good part of the bay is like nails on a chalkboard

Do you know the way to San Jose?

San Jose’s downtown has been lackluster as of late. It was actually cool from about 2000-2015 but more business keep shuttering, which continued to accelerate during and after covid

what a beautiful town. No joke it's like the rapture happened or something, I love it!

"Like GTA5 without a single NPC" - classic quote!

I think you nailed it. You have a combined problem of high residential rent and low commercial occupancy (no office workers). Working people can't afford to live there and rich people don't want to live there. Gotta bring the artists back, the small businesses back, the restaurants back. Its possible. The banks will have to take a hit for a good decade but its fixable. Detroit, I heard, is on the up and up.

Get what you vote for!

A huge residential project called Nabr in the works for years also gave up in San Jose.

Great Work.

Oh, there are homeless people, but most of them are living along the Guadalupe River. And if you do see homeless in downtown San Jose, they are in Saint James Park.

1:24 is that a giant 💩 sculpture?! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

A lot of people are still working from home. It’s more busy down by San Pedro square on a Friday.

As a native to San Jose I would love this place a lot since I was raised here and most people don’t really live in San Jose downtown, they mostly live at least The western of San Jose

Most tech people work from home. Apartment and houses are still very expensive in San Jose. But, how long it will last?

The saving grace is that large block of San Jose State is very close to downtown SJ. State money still flows to their core.

Errrr... I live in Downtown San Jose and pay $3300/mo for a 1bdrm apartment and my building is full. We live here and want to live here for sure

I just finished a trip to see some MLB ballparks. Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh we’re about the same. Nice clean streets, but almost no people. You could jaywalk everywhere without looking for traffic. There wasn’t any traffic.

the bay area will go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah

1:23 okay I’m on my phone and my eye vision is not the best but am I seeing that right, a big pile of shit 💩 statue?😂

you didnt drive by the area where more people would have been around first street and santa clara ? its been 25 been 25 years since i was hanging out there

Downtown has always been like this, i actually never really know why...unless you have business in those places you really never go down there. Theres too much to do in san jose, and people are usually at valley fair, or oakridge, or santana row...or heck they go to SF. Downtown has never been a real hangout spot, theres nothing to do down there, maybe a few restaurants here and there but yeah no reason to ever go there

"...even the homeless don't want to go there..." ??? Why, when there aren't enough (working?) people from whom to hustle for money? The homeless go where people with money go, and yes... even in Santa Clara County (San José, etc) the homeless are headed for the suburbs. "There's money in them there 'burbs!"

OMG! That's the solution to homelessness Close all the stores.

I would bet that rent reductions are coming. They have to reduce the taxable value of this property or lose it to the city.

The neutron bomb effect

it's pretty simple why there aren't that many stores in downtown san jose. it is fairly close to East Ridge Mall and Valley Fair Mall so stores don't need to establish a footprint there. as for lack of restaurants, you can blame the high inflation for that. restaurants that want to charge $50-$75 person just can't survive in this environment unless they have something special.

It's always been like this during the day. Also, forgot to mention, Google hasn't fully taken over yet.

I was living in a shity one-bedroom over on Williams and Saratoga on the west side I left there it was 975 3 months later it was $1,200 glad I left San Jose a long time ago my cousin always wanted to go downtown there was always something to do there was a club called tunes that had been around for many many years or they had music in the park you won't see that anymore and yes San Jose is bad watch you drive your car over to the east side of San Jose story road in White road

let them have what they voted for

This RU-vidr probably hasn’t visited too many cities.

Downtown San Jose not much shop and store. 99 %. Is office after 5. O’clock. They all home already of cause. No People

Bro has never been to San Jose 😂

Come sit on hiway 101 in the morning for a hour and half and tell me nobody lives in San jose. This looks like Sunday morning driving around. I can tell you every shopping center has a pho noodles or taco restaurant.

Trust me there are a lot of homeless in San Jose. Go to the Guadalupe River by the Shark Tank or off of 280, where The Jungle encampment is located. Most of the homeless on DT San Jose hang out in front of City Hall, smoking weed out in the open. San Jose is and always was a bit of a $hithole.

You are talking about downtown San jo which is not all the city. There is a whole lot more to San jo then downtown! Google, Apple, and all the tech companies are located in Santa Clara which is part of San jo but not located in downtown.

Normally on the work week peoples weekends its pretty empty. sketchy peoples about too.

San Jose is the 10th largest city in US, don't confuse downtown San Jose with City of San Jose. San Jose has a population of 1 million people and very very few people lives in downtown San Jose. Saying San Jose is the most empty city is simply wrong.

so tech companies are mainly in sunnyvale, cupertino and mountain view..... not down town san jose

Just a side note: I'm here in Vegas for a few days. They don't fk around with shoplifters, lol. And I haven't seen one tent, not one, and I've been on and off the Strip.

School starts next week and there will be 10,000 college students walking around downtown. Maybe some Boba shops will open so students won’t have to drive to Cupertino for lunch.

no store no robbery Hight taxes

I see a lot of cars parked on the street so there must be people around. Also, they must have confidence their cars won't be broken into?

That's a beautiful city! Could we rename your channel? Dead Cities of America.

They can't lower the rents for political reasons. If it's lowered and they slap on rent controls then they're stuck. Another reason rent controls are counter productive.

First of all, there are no area in Frisco that would be considered good!!!

The pandemic has closed down a lot of businesses all around the country dude! Downtown sections of major cities such as San Jose and San Francisco are stagnant because businesses aren’t renting offices and people aren’t renting the apartments, who could afford them!!

What amazes me about the US is where does the money come from to build these ghost cities?

You take 25 marbles and place them in a 5 in diameter bowl, then compare that to a 50 marbles and place them in a 15 in diameter bowl, most people would say there are more marbles in the smaller bowl. Quite simple. The design of this city was screwed up royally in the 1950's and has never recovered due to planning, and it will never recover. As for no homeless? I wish that was the case, you can't throw a sandwich without hitting one of those bastards. Nothing but closed stores? Have you ever visited other CA cities and towns, have you been to SF lately? Looks like a zombie apocalypse with all the tweaked out burnouts and boarded up stores. Oakland is no better, only difference is you replace most of the zombies with roving band of thugs. "fun areas" indeed.

Downtown isn't San Jose lmao. Downtown definitely having issues with the rise of work from home, but it's always had issues attracting smaller businesses like restaurants. But if you think Downtown San Jose IS San Jose, you've never actually been to San Jose.

Let the entire Frisco area implode!!!

The suburbs are next.

Remote work

A year ago I moved to San Jose, I keep telling everyone, where are the people, it’s the most boring city I have ever been to.

sweet! LOWER THE RENT! :D

😥

🐶I call b*******🤖worst freaking traffic ⚡ ever go down there in 🍀person 😅✌️

Looks ZOmbie land now . SAN JOSE ITS dying

I would say Nextdoor is a better barometer, even with the PC police doing all they can to prevent negative perceptions. if they see the word "homeless" in a post they immediately send a warning with a link to approved messages on homelessness. But you can still look at the number of people posting about assaults, vandalism, car break ins, porch pirates, etc. Look at what people are posting about in what used to be enviable suburban neighborhoods in Almaden and Santa Teresa and places like Oak Ridge Mall - where the Home Depot burned down to distract people from a theft. The nextdoor pet hospital was evacuated in time because concerned people acted without thinking.

Is this a joke? I live in San Jose. Trust me, there's no shortage of businesses or restaurants or anything.

Why did have all the Sunglasses out on display in that store ?

Those of us old enough to remember...in the seventy's and eighty's, San Jose had a huge rate of crime, one of the worst in the state. It was awful, people began leaving back then, crime increased, drugs and robbrries. All yhise businesses are long gone, and decades later, this is the result. Democrat policies in action. Eventually, this is how all democrat run cities end up.

Most miss leading video I've ever seen

Empty??? Lol

No one voted for COVID and the resulting “Remote workplace”. Quit blaming it on the voters.

I lived in dtsj 2017 and it was so vibrant and bustling. Great nightlife too smh

This video lies. This is a pointless video.

So crazy.

Do you know the way to San Jose?