Given the fact that, as others have noted, it's not like San Jose is a depressed area, the downtown--such as it is--is just sort of boring and run down in spots. I was at an open compute platform conference there for the first time in ages a couple of years back. (Many moons ago I used to attend Intel Developers Forums there regularly). On the one hand, the environment (restaurants, etc.) had improved somewhat but I was surprised that the overall downtown hadn't become more vibrant and interesting than it was.