Old Town, on University Avenue, was originally called the “Old Town Shopping and Cultural Center” and it opened in 1966, the year I graduated from high school and started college at San Jose State. Within a few years of Old Town’s opening the California Shakespeare Festival moved from the Life Boat Theater near Santa Clara University into the Old Town Theater (if you are a more recent LG resident, you would know it as the newly closed Border’s Book Store).
Though the exact year is hard to tie down, a back yard amphitheater was opened behind the main Old Town building, between it and Highway 17. It was designed to appear similar to the Shakespearean era Globe Theater in London. Inside of the main building, the old school, there would be one, two and sometimes even three concurrent venues for the more popular rock groups that were flourishing in the nearby mountain sides or up from the down hill flat lands. In a back corner was a large, eclectic and ultra comfortable privately owned book store, Walden Pond. There were several jewelry shops, an art shop specializing on limited run original prints. Unlike most shopping “malls” of the day, Old Town housed numerous potters, hand-made leather goods and in the upstairs terraces, was Mimi’s Rooftop Cafe, which sometimes hosted poetry readings and classical guitarists. On any warm weekend afternoon, all of these different places; theaters, shops and stores, would be oozing out enough culture and entertainment for the whole county to come by and get their fill.
Me and my young friends went to Old Town at every opportunity. No place could compare with it. The variety and extent of the “creative spark” was well afire here, in Old Town, and the spark’s beacon shined far afield and beckoned more artists and craftsmen from near and far to join in at this growing cultural Mecca. However, Old Town, just like Los Gatos itself, was a social entity yet trying to gain concordance between its old self and its new self, re-establish a reliable balance of basic elements.
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It was during this era that I was married to a ravishing beauty of an artist. During her last two years of high school, her parents worked in Europe and she was exposed to European art culture to an extent which all of us envied. She had seen the best of the best, then the parents moved her back to Los Gatos. Together, we relished the activities so immediate and amply available at Old Town. We would easily forgo milk money to make sure we got to the . . .
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