Johnny Moreno is an award-winning San Jose-based actor, associate artistic director at the San Jose Stage Company, and theater professor at San José State University. He has worked with the Stage since 1999 and has advocated for cutting-edge plays that spark new ideas and thoughtful dialogue with audiences. “I love the daring selection of plays at the Stage. I played Jacob McNeal in McNeal. It’s a very heavy show about AI and the future of humanity. Last year, we did Enemy of the People, a play about capitalism and ambition,” said Johnny. The Stage balances heavy hitters with productions like Million Dollar Quartet, a musical about the time Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins came together for a legendary jam session.
The diversity of plays at the Stage reflects San Jose’s diverse community. When reimagining classics, Johnny advocates for more diverse representation and storytelling. It’s one of the most important concepts he teaches in his courses at SJSU. He said,“I encourage my students and anyone I work with: ‘Don’t let anyone tell you what stories you should tell. What stories do you want to tell?’ ”
The Stage 490 S. 1st Street (408) 283-7142 thestage.org IG: sanjosestage
Goodtime Bar in downtown San Jose’s Fountain Alley was co-founded by Ann Le and Steven Huynh, inspired by Portuguese natural wine bars, to create a community-focused “third space.” This ethos attracted local chef Alex Whiteman.
Born and raised in San Jose, Chef Whiteman grew up in a “food-positive” family. His mother reinforced this foundation by ensuring family dinners and hosting blindfolded games of “guess the spice,” which cultivated his keen sense of aroma. This combination of comfort and curiosity led him to New York for culinary school, then to kitchens like Momofuku. He worked alongside Chef Calvin Eng at the Brooklyn-based Taiwanese-American restaurant, Win Son, where Eng taught him that success can stem from strong principles and organization, not just skill.
Chef Whiteman’s philosophy centers on cooking food he himself enjoys, working with the seasons, and sourcing ingredients locally. The resulting menu is constantly evolving and designed to complement the exciting, eccentric profiles of natural wine, offering flavors that are both comforting and bold.
Goodtime Bar is part of an emerging collaborative culinary community in San Jose. Chef Whiteman values the knowledge shared amongst local chefs, believing they are “much stronger together.” He hopes the menu, paired with a glass of natural wine, can provide some comfort after a long day.
San Jose-born fiber textile artist Alyssarhaye Graciano has stitched herself into the heart of the city’s creative ecosystem. As curator for MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana) in the SoFA District, she balances her own textile practice with the responsibility of shepherding new artistic voices into the public eye. Her creative reach also extends beyond the gallery walls: She’s the author of Chunky Knits: Cozy Hats, Scarves and More Made Simple with Extra-Large Yarn, a book that champions accessibility in knitting.
At MACLA, Graciano continues the organization’s legacy of elevating Latino artists, helping them connect with audiences across the Bay Area. “At MACLA, we pay artists when they’re exhibiting their work or if they’re doing some sort of program or workshop because we believe in trying to create a sustainable art career,” said Graciano.
Graciano’s vision threads together art, access, and belonging in the SoFA district as well as the community at large. “I would like to see more folks being able to stay in San Jose, being able to afford to stay as creatives, as artists, and [see] how we can all give back to the community that helped raise us,” said Graciano.
Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA) 510 S. 1st Street (408) 998-2783 maclaarte.org IG: macla_sanjose
Local Color SJ is not an arts organization; it’s an artists’ organization. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) by San Jose-based artist Erin Salazar, Local Color is for artists, by artists. This ethos drives their mission to build equitable pathways for artists to thrive. “I care about supporting local artists getting paid equitably for work that beautifies and signifies the community that they live in,” Salazar shares.
Their public art program has brought together a community of local artists to celebrate San Jose’s cultural diversity. Vital to their program, Salazar shares, is “the ability to have your community represented back at you and to ensure that artists have the things that they need to thrive.” She adds, “Because we work with such a diversity of artists—we work with artists who have a variety of different backgrounds, cultures, histories, and lived experiences—when people come to San Jose, they see themselves reflected in their public spaces, too.” From celebrating 100 artists in 100 Block SJ to bringing the community together to paint the Threads Woven street mural, Local Color has redistributed over $1.8 million back to creatives, demonstrating its commitment to nurturing San Jose’s artistic community.
“There are so many artists who just want to express themselves,” shares Juan Carlos Araujo, founder and creative director of Empire Seven Studios and SJ Walls. Araujo, an artist who grew up in San Jose, first painted on walls doing graffiti. He founded Empire Seven Studios, an independent small business that includes a gallery and creative studio, in 2008. In 2013, the studio began to bring art to public walls—a DIY movement at a time when street art began to take off. “I was traveling a lot and saw what was happening in other cities, specifically cities that might not have had a lot of public art but began to embrace it, and it became this explosive movement that started to really take off. I wanted to bring that to San Jose,” Araujo reflects.
In 2017, Empire Seven founded SJ Walls (formerly POW! WOW! San Jose), an annual mural festival as part of the larger international cohort of public art festivals, Worldwide Walls. The festival has brought dozens of murals to downtown San Jose, including the largest mural in the city. For Araujo, the festival has provided artists with the opportunity to play and express themselves: “Even if they are getting some of the best commission work at the biggest companies, artists still want an opportunity to come to an event like SJ Walls where they can be themselves and express themselves as freethinkers.”
Cherri Lakey and Brian Eder have played a pivotal role in shaping and energizing the art culture in downtown San Jose’s SoFA district. Their gallery openings often mark a starting point for art-goers exploring the neighborhood, making the couple a recognizable face of the local scene.
In 2000, they created a home for street art, subculture, counterculture, and activism when they launched their first art space, Anno Domini, in a warehouse. “We wanted to be a place to bring people together to celebrate, participate, and support those artists we felt were important voices of our time,” said Cherri.
Six years later, they took a leading role in developing the South FIRST FRIDAYS artwalk, and two years after that, the SubZERO Festival was born. “When we moved into the SoFA District, we knew our Anno Domini friends would be coming for our First Friday openings, and we didn’t want to just send them into a bar afterwards. So we called up a couple of our friends at Works/SJ, MACLA, and the Quilt Museum and told them that if they would stay open late and be free admission, we would send our friends to them,” said Cherri. “It’s a great event because it has so many ripple effects for artists’ recognition, gallery attendance, and our small businesses that benefit from the community coming out.”
Chef duo Maria Belzunce and Jason Venters cut their teeth in Los Angeles kitchens before bringing their upscale culinary experiences back to Venters’ hometown. They opened Milk Belly Bakery to combine their passions for family and food staples from their Filipino and Japanese upbringings. Head baker Belzunce grew up in her family’s Filipino restaurant and bakery in Southern California, and Venters grew up in San Jose’s Japantown.
They opened their downtown brick-and-mortar storefront to be closer to family and balance time with their young children. They set out with limited funding and no investors, relying purely on the belief in their bread. Their philosophy is centered on quality and attention to detail. Venters, inspired by his time as a sushi chef, believes the “vehicle is just as important as the cargo,” stressing that the bread is as essential as the filling.
The menu reflects their blended heritage with items like the Longanisa sandwich with Japanese-style bread and Filipino pork sausage. Milk Belly’s approach extends to the broader community, actively supporting other small businesses by hosting pop-ups. They hope to inspire others by proving that significant capital isn’t necessary for success—just passion and a smart, tactical approach. They join other downtown eateries in bringing a new, elevated, chef-driven experience to San Jose’s food scene while maintaining a welcoming, homey feel.
Zuri Alexa is a DJ and experience curator known for bringing good vibes to any function. Her DJ sets are multifaceted and blend genres like R&B and house. You can find her spinning at all types of events and places throughout San Jose and the greater Bay Area—including Tech at Nite at the Tech Interactive, local coffee shops like Academic Coffee, the Silicon Valley PRIDE Parade, and even more low-key block parties.
She is also a producer at Universal Grammar, a music event production company that highlights emerging artists and fosters communities around soul, R&B, jazz, and electronic music. In the past, Universal Grammar has brought artists like the Internet, Omar Apollo, Snoh Aalegra, and Kaytranada to San Jose years before they started to play larger venues. Universal Grammar tends to put on small intimate shows of about 150 people—the kind of show you look back on and can’t believe you were there before the artist blew up. “Talent and culture has always been here in San Jose, just underground,” said Zuri. “San Jose is an ‘if you know, you know’ kind of place. We have a lot of hidden gems.”
There’s a reason why Wendy Neff and Felipe Bravo named their space Fox Tale Fermentation Project. A sip of a sour ale might include tamarind, candy cap mushrooms, or Asian pear. Elderberry, sage, grapefruit, and jasmine transform into effervescent kombuchas. Stout-like sodas feature vanilla, honeybush tea, wild cherry bark, molasses, and fermented cacao bean syrup.
Drawing from Felipe’s experience in electrical engineering and production brewing and from Wendy’s background leading Facebook’s superfoods and fermentation initiatives, the pair experiment with fermentation processes and ingredients for their eclectic menu of beers, kombuchas, mocktails, and vegan cuisine. “A big part of Fox Tale is that experimentation—trying new things and sharing them to keep people inspired and excited about food, agriculture, and what’s around us,” says Wendy.
Fox Tale’s ethos of co-creating, tinkering, and fostering community involves centering locally grown produce, collaborating with other breweries, and providing performers and artists a space to show their work. Wendy says, “It’s not just about what we’re making and doing, but it’s a space where everybody gets to do it together […] Everybody can get a little bit playful and creative with it. I think San Jose deserves to be a space where other people are doing that. It just needs to be recognized.”
A growing industry in San Jose is the creative retail world. Largely supported by San José Made and its sister company MOMENT, many local artists have turned their craft into thriving business ventures. Genevieve Santos, owner of the stationary shop Le Petit Elefant, is one of them. Deeply inspired by travel, she makes watercolor illustrations that explore themes of culture and heritage, food as a love language, and the power of place. When she’s not traveling to BTS concerts or reconnecting with her culture in the Philippines, she’s painting and making ceramics in her Japantown studio, housed just behind the MOMENT JTOWN storefront.
Genevieve credits her business’s growth to working with San José Made, a local company aimed at growing small businesses through curated craft fairs, pop-ups and micro-retail storefronts, maker meet-ups, and social media campaigns. Genevieve testifies to their impact: “[Working with them] is an incredible marketing opportunity and learning experience. We have such a vibrant artists scene because SJ Made is there to guide the growing process.”
MOMENT has multiple locations downtown, but for Genevieve the JTOWN location is a special place. She describes the neighborhood as “this beautiful blend of old and new,” where you can simultaneously discover new artists, appreciate multi-generational restaurants and businesses, and learn local history in one of the few remaining Japantowns in the United States.
“San Jose doesn’t get the recognition it deserves for being the lowrider capital,” says Angel Romero, founder of Dueñas, an all-women’s lowrider club.
Angel’s love for lowriders came from her mom, who tricked up a brand new 1977 Monte Carlo she had received for her own quinceañera. When Angel and her siblings were kids, this was the car they’d cruise around in with their mom, jumping around and messing with the switches. By the time she was twelve, Angel knew how to cruise around on her own—sometimes joining the popular route on El Camino in Santa Clara.
Angel’s first car, a 1965 Impala, has been her one-and-only for 21 years now. She painted it purple “since that’s my mom’s favorite color, and I wanted everyone to know it was a woman’s car.”
After joining a couple different car clubs between years of solo riding, Angel helped build the United Lowrider Council of San Jose. Her vision of community service work built the foundation for Dueñas. The all-woman’s fleet works with local organizations to hold toy drives, fundraisers, and safety kits—pulling up in outfits that match their cars.
